Interamente dedicated to the Bolognese painter Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), the museum – officially inaugurated in October 1993 – is housed on the second floor of Palazzo d’Accursio, next to the Municipal Art Collections, in specially renovated and adapted environments. Born from the Archive and Morandi Study Center section, opened in 1982 in dedicated spaces of the Modern Art Gallery, the museum was created in Palazzo d’Accursio by testamentary constraint expressed by Maria Teresa Morandi on the occasion of the donation of the works of the artist brother to the city; and integrated by the Gallery section. The exhibition also includes twenty-two works from the Francesco Paolo Ingrao collection, purchased by the Municipality in 1985, and numerous testamentary legacies, including the collection belonging to Cesare Gnudi, and some deposits, such as the small Still Life once donated by the artist to the critic and friend Francesco Arcangeli. The itinerary is completed by the visit to the house at via Fondazza 36, where the master lived and worked between 1910 and 1964, presented as a sort of “memory room” including personal objects of the artist and the family. The route includes a visit to Morandi’s studio reconstructed with original objects such as the famous easel, the palette, the brushes, and the objects portrayed many times in the paintings. The room where he received guests instead preserves the small but interesting ancient art collection already owned by the master. Complementing the route are documentation spaces, with photos, videos, and documents, a multipurpose room, and the library. The museum was directed until 2001 by Marilena Pasquali and, subsequently, from 2005 by Claudio Poppi who redesigned its organization with correct historical-artistic philology. The monographic collection consists of two hundred and fifty works, including sixty-one oil paintings executed between 1910 and 1964, eighteen watercolors, eighty-eight drawings, seventy-nine etchings, two sculptures, and two matrix plates displayed in a philological and dynamic path, aimed at recalling the atmosphere of the artist’s studio with his collection of ancient art masters. Giorgio Morandi developed his extraordinary artistic poetics with great originality, while touching, within his research centered on the themes of still life with bottles, flowers, and landscape, all the evolutions of art, from metaphysics to informal art, and drawing inspiration from more geometric and silent medieval and modern painting, from Giotto to Masaccio and Paolo Uccello, from Chardin to Cézanne. The activity of the Morandi Museum is aimed at enhancing its heritage and relating the figure of the painter and his work with similar or parallel experiences nationally and internationally and with particular reference to collecting: exhibitions remember Zoran Music. The Venetian Watercolors, Exhibition of twenty-seven paintings by Giorgio Morandi once belonging to the José Luis and Beatriz Plaza Collection, Jean Michel Folon. Watercolors and sculptures, Paul Klee. Figures and metamorphoses, Alberto Giacometti: drawings, sculptures, and graphics, Max Klinger. Engravings from a private Bolognese collection, Julius Bissier. Works from 1925 to 1965, The Morandi of the Giovanardi Collection, Luciano de Vita. The first etchings. 1950-1956 and Domenico Rambelli. Drawings, Josef Albers. Tribute to the Square – a retrospective, Mario Pozzati with Drawings and Concetto Pozzati. Morandi’s high artistic profile has been promoted abroad in various exhibitions including Giorgio Morandi. Paintings and works on paper from 1914 to 1963, in Lisbon, Morandi retrospective exhibition, in Madrid, Giorgio Morandi. Flowers and Landscapes, in Tokyo and Giorgio Morandi.Watercolors, in Vienna and Winterthur, and in Bologna, and among the most recent Rembrandt and Morandi: mutable dances of incised signs, Efrem Tavoni and Giorgio Morandi. Tribute to a friendship and Engraved Literature. Furthermore, to emphasize the figure of the Bolognese painter, the Giorgio Morandi engraving Prize was also established. The Museum spaces have also hosted exhibitions of twentieth-century and contemporary artists whose work establishes a deep dialogue with Morandi’s works, for example “Bernd & Hilla Becher” (2009), “To the sweet homeland: the return to Italy of Filippo de Pisis” (2009), “Wayne Thiebaud” (2011) and “Alexandre Hollan. Silences en couleurs” (2011).
Information about Museo Morandi
Piazza Maggiore, 6,
40121 Bologna (Bologna)
051203646
mmorandi@comune.bologna.it
Source: MIBACT
