Vincenzo Ghirlandi, Faenza,

Private Collection, Switzerland (acquired in 2001),

John Cheim Collection, New York (acquired in 2015), 

Private collection, UK.

Lamberto Vitali, Morandi. Catalogo generale, Milan 1977, vol. II, no. 1291, n.p., illustrated

Lamberto Vitali, Morandi. Dipinti. Catalogo generale, Milan 1994, vol. II, no. 1291, n.p., illustrated

Born in Bologna in 1890, Giorgio Morandi spent most of his life with his mother and three unmarried sisters in an apartment on via Fondazza, where he occupied an austere room used as both a bedroom and studio. Morandi is best known today for his beautifully contemplative still-life paintings, works which led the art historian, Roberto Longhi, to describe him as “arguably the greatest Italian painter of the twentieth century.”

In spite of his fame as a still-life painter, Morandi began his artistic investigation by experimenting with landscapes. His first landscape painting can be dated to 1911 and his first landscape etching to 1913. Accounting for approximately one quarter of Morandi’s oeuvre, 1941 to 1944 were the most productive years of this genre; however, the artist destroyed many works so the overall production was significantly greater.

Morandi’s landscapes bear witness to his artistic evolution, offering a clearer progression than his still lifes. Landscapes produced in the 1920s are characterised by a thick, dense impasto and a vivid realism, evocative of Cezanne’s landscapes. With time, the colours became increasingly subdued, and the composition tended towards abstraction, as in the present painting. The impasto too becomes thinner as if to highlight the energy of the brushstrokes; his later landscapes from the 1960s almost stand on the edge between abstraction and figuration.

The subject of Morandi's landscapes usually fall into two categories: those near his home in Bologna, and those focussing on the small town of Grizzana, epitomising the Italian countryside. The former type of landscapes varies in specific foci, some showing the surroundings from around Morandi’s studio in via Fondazza, others the courtyard of his house or the neighbouring buildings. The majority, however, depict the countryside around Grizzana, a village on the Apennines where the Morandi family often spent their summers and where they retired to during WWII.

Landscapes are a particularly recurrent genre in the last years of Morandi’s life; the present work belonging to this phase. The painting is likely inspired by a view in Grizzana, however of equal importance to the representation is the materiality of the paint. In his later years, Morandi achieved the apex of simplification. Forms, reduced to their essence are barely recognisable. This impasto, now very thin, lets the brushwork emerge in its rhythmic energy – the vibrance of nature encapsulated by the trees, apparently gently swaying in the breeze, contrasts with the flat weight of the building that is almost engulfed by the landscape around it. Colour itself loses its descriptive function and is flattened to the extreme. The canvas thus appears as an abstract composition of whites and greens, a distillation of a scene, of a kind to which Morandi consistently returned.