Fiori

‘I am essentially a painter of the kind of still life composition that communicates a sense of tranquillity and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all else’
Giorgio Morandi

‘There is little or nothing new in the world. What matters is the new and different position in which an artist finds himself seeing and considering the things of so-called nature and the works that have preceded and interested him’
Giorgio Morandi

Like his contemplative still-life compositions consisting of carefully constructed arrangements of bottles and objects, Giorgio Morandi’s paintings of flowers are suffused with an ambience of stillness and a sense of meditative contemplation. The floral still-life remained an important subject to which Morandi returned at intervals throughout his career, often presenting these intimate, timeless paintings as gifts to his family, friends or admirers. First owned by renowned art historian and critic Lionello Venturi, Fiori was painted in 1950, one of a small group that feature the same bouquet of roses in a solitary fluted vase. Rendered with a rich impasto that evokes the blousy, blooming roses, the pale blush pinks and creams of the petals appear luminous amidst the delicate greens of the foliage and soft neutral tones of the vase, background and tabletop. Within this composition of chromatic harmony, this carefully constructed composition resonates with a dignified restraint and calm tranquillity; the qualities that define Morandi’s œuvre.

Morandi approached the depiction of flowers in the same way as his still-life arrangements: with considered observation and careful scrutiny. Instead of living bouquets, the artist often used dried or silk flowers as his models, so that they would not wilt or die while he spent time intensively scrutinising their forms and the effects of light before he embarked on painting them. These floral arrangements remained in Morandi’s studio, gradually accumulating the layers of dust that accumulated upon his collection of bottles, vases, pots and cups. In Fiori, Morandi has depicted the delicate rose petals with swirling brushstrokes of muted tones, creating the crinkled, organic shapes of the opulent, sensuous blooms; a contrast to the often-regulated order of his still-lifes populated with bottles, jugs and vases. There is no trace of wilting petals or fallen foliage in the painting; instead the petals appear frozen in time, heightening the pervading sense of stillness that fills the composition.

For Morandi, these works were not, as is usually associated with floral still-lifes, meditations on the transience of beauty, nor the ephemerality of life, but instead they allowed him to capture the essence of his subject as it exists in reality, in painterly form. Morandi’s friend, Vitale Bloch, writing on the occasion of Morandi’s first retrospective in 1954, described these flower paintings: ‘For his flower still lifes he generally uses paper roses. These are like vers d’occasion and in them the gracefulness, the stillness, and the resignation which are eloquent of the soul of this artist find their most direct expression (V. Bloch, ‘Introduction’, in Giorgio Morandi: Paintings and Prints, exh. cat., London, 1954, n.p.).