Painting of the Day

Still Life. by Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964). Oil on canvas, 1938. Belongs to the collection of MoMA, NYC. 

My comments:

I couldn’t really find much information about this artist online, but my art professor showed us a book of images by this artist in class today because we’re working on still lifes for our next assignment. Our professor really wanted to focus on perspective for the class as well as how the tone of objects change due to changes in light and perspective, and so he used this artist as an example for that. 

Morandi tries to play games with perspective and object relationships in his paintings. In the one above, you might notice that tan hue that colors the background is also covering the black pitcher with the silhouette of another pitcher. There is not, however, an actual pitcher overlapping it. Morandi did not make a mistake with this. He uses pretty bland colors (the strong red and blue used here is actually pretty unusual for him) to make his image look deceivingly ordinary and mundane, but then inserts this little strange mystery into the composition. It’s a very unique approach to still life painting.