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Lot Essay
One of Morandi's finest etched works, Grande natura morta con la lampada a petrolio was created in 1930, at the height of the artist's most productive period in printmaking. 1930 was also the year he became Professor of Printmaking at the Academy of Fine Arts, Bologna. This appointment gave him financial security for the rest of his career and allowed him to devote himself almost entirely to his art.
Despite the arrival of revolutionary new printing techniques in the 20th century, Morandi, who was entirely self-taught, always and only used the very traditional and relatively simple technique of etching. Rejecting any innovation, the foundation of his work was the grand tradition of printmaking. Indeed, his mastery of the technique was based on the first treatises on etching, published in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Morandi's rigorous approach of reducing familiar objects to pure geometric forms is reminiscent of Paul Cézanne, whose works he had admired at the Rome Secession of 1914. In a more obvious sense, Grande natura morta con la lampada a petrolio is the artist's own, more classical and lyrical answer to the Cubist arrangements of his contemporaries Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Grounded in the tangible and the familiar, Morandi's art more immediately suggests the idea of a fourth dimension or metaphysical realm than the literary, surreal visions of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrá, with whom he had exhibited the previous year. It is perhaps a testament to the strength of Morandi's artistic vision that he was able to steer his own, highly personal path amongst the many avant-garde influences of his time, in order to produce subtly haunting prints such as the present one.
Despite the arrival of revolutionary new printing techniques in the 20th century, Morandi, who was entirely self-taught, always and only used the very traditional and relatively simple technique of etching. Rejecting any innovation, the foundation of his work was the grand tradition of printmaking. Indeed, his mastery of the technique was based on the first treatises on etching, published in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Morandi's rigorous approach of reducing familiar objects to pure geometric forms is reminiscent of Paul Cézanne, whose works he had admired at the Rome Secession of 1914. In a more obvious sense, Grande natura morta con la lampada a petrolio is the artist's own, more classical and lyrical answer to the Cubist arrangements of his contemporaries Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Grounded in the tangible and the familiar, Morandi's art more immediately suggests the idea of a fourth dimension or metaphysical realm than the literary, surreal visions of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrá, with whom he had exhibited the previous year. It is perhaps a testament to the strength of Morandi's artistic vision that he was able to steer his own, highly personal path amongst the many avant-garde influences of his time, in order to produce subtly haunting prints such as the present one.