Words & Photography Leslie Williamson
Published in No 14
Morandi’s painting studio.
Leslie Williamson’s most recent book, Still Lives: In the Homes of Artists, Great and Unsung, published by Rizzoli, features a stunning collection of intimate portrayals of artists’ homes and studios including Barbara Hepworth, Derek Jarman, Georgia O’Keeffe, Isamu Noguchi and Andrew Wyeth among others. The following is the chapter on Giorgio Morandi, the Italian painter and print maker who specialized in exquisite, understated still lifes noted for their tonal subtlety.
It’s surprising, but apparently Giorgio Morandi’s paintings are not everyone’s cup of tea. I learned this at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Morandi retrospective in 2008. I’ll never forget it. A couple walked into the gallery, did the quickest of walkthroughs, and as they breezed out, I heard the man say, “Boooooring,” drawing the word out for effect. I’ve always felt a bit sorry for that guy. I can see how Morandi’s small, subtle paintings of humble domestic objects and landscapes can seem unspectacular upon quick review. They are quiet. Meditative. You have to give them your attention. They are like poetry. The more you spend time with them, the more eloquent and affecting they become.
Morandi’s simple house sits in the countryside outside Bologna and was designed to resemble the home of family friends located just across the road.
Born in Bologna, Italy, Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) had what might seem like a small life. By that I mean he lived all his life in Bologna. He never moved from the family apartment he grew up in and never married. And after traveling throughout Italy as a young man, he rarely traveled internationally. His interest in painting started early, but being the only son, he was expected to join his father’s export business. After a brief and unsuccessful period working in the family business, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts of Bologna. Thereafter he made art his life focus. After his father’s sudden death in 1908, it was he, his mother (who died in 1950), and his three unwed schoolteacher sisters for the rest of his days. Morandi taught as well, first teaching art in elementary schools and then at the Academy of Fine Arts for twenty-six years. And all the while he painted.
An arrangement of Morandi’s objects, used repeatedly in his paintings throughout his career. The three colored cans, upon closer inspection, turned out to be Ovaltine containers that had been painted in the specific colors Morandi desired.
The mythology of Morandi is that he was a hermit — a monk-like artist dedicated to his painting and his painting alone. The truth, I think, was a bit less extreme; he was maybe just a quiet guy who knew how he liked to spend his time and was discerning about whom he spent that time with. He said of his own work that it communicated “a sense of tranquility and privacy, moods which I have always valued above all.” During the fifty-odd years he painted, he created 1,350 oil paintings and gained the recognition of both the general public and critics alike. I’ve always seen his still lives as subtle family portraits, where spacing, color, and shape explain the psychological makeup of the particular “object family” portrayed. Morandi could say so much with the basics of objects and colors. I love and admire his work.
So no surprise when I began planning this book that I had dreams of including his home in it. I knew there was a museum on the site of his apartment in Bologna, but from a quick bit of research it was clear that it would not work for this book. It was re-created and presented in such a way that everything was behind plexiglass. Later, it was only by chance that I learned about the Morandis’ summer home in Grizzana. I could only find pictures of his studio, but, after an exchange with the museum in Bologna, I was connected to the municipality of Grizzana Morandi, about twelve miles southwest of Bologna.
The living room still holds the family’s collection of books, including many on Morandi himself, kept by his sister Marie-Theresa. She was the last of the Morandis to inhabit the house.
The family had been coming to the area for many years and, in the late 1950s, Morandi bought a parcel of land and built a summerhouse for himself and his sisters. It is the only home he ever owned and the only proper studio he ever had (his bedroom doubled as his studio at the apartment in Bologna). Morandi’s youngest sister, Maria Teresa, left the house to the municipality when she passed away in 1994. She had been planning to open the house as a museum so had kept it intact, and her instructions to the town upon her death were to fulfill those plans. It took two years from my initial contact to make it to Grizzana and almost from the moment I arrived, my experience was extremely unusual.
The Morandis’ summer home is nothing grand. Its design was inspired by the home of family friends, the Veggettis, across the road, where the Morandi family had previously frequently stayed as guests (they had been visiting the area since 1913). Knowing this, I strolled across the road to check that house out, since the Morandi house was still locked up tight when I arrived. Soon Stephania from the Grizzana Morandi municipality arrived with the keys. After giving me a quick tour of the two-story house, she dropped the keys in my hand, gave me some directions about locking up, and told me when I was finished with my shoot to leave the keys with the innkeeper across the street, where I was staying.
Only the bare necessities in Morandi’s bedroom: bed, dresser, desk and armoire.
Gulp. I was simultaneously filled with both excitement and anxiety. She was leaving me with the keys for the whole time I was here? What a dream! But at the same time, I was concerned that she would be so trusting, even though I knew I was worthy of that trust. Alas, I was not going to protest. Stephania was in a rush and she was off as quickly as she had arrived, so I just got to work.
The house is as modest in furnishings as it was in design. The first floor contains a library/sitting room, dining room, small kitchen, and bathroom, and one of the two bedrooms once occupied by Giorgio’s three sisters. Upstairs is another small bathroom, the second of the sisters’ bedrooms, Giorgio’s bedroom, and his studio. The best way to describe the house is minimal. All the essentials are here but there is nothing superfluous. And true to Maria Teresa’s wishes, nothing has been touched. The Danish teak bookshelves in the library still hold Giorgio’s and his family’s collection of books, all the cabinets are still full, and Maria Teresa’s clothing and fresh linens still sit in the bedroom closet.
Morandi’s three sisters had two bedrooms in the house, each with a set of twin beds.
The dressing table in the sisters’ second floor bedroom enjoys a slice of sunlight in the late afternoon.
I found the house very touching in its utter simplicity, but I have to admit that first day was challenging. I had more freedom than I usually have, and was able to look around and inside of things more than I have ever been able to in the past. But as the day wore on, I knew I was not capturing the essence of this house in the images I was making. I could feel it—there was something in the way. I was rather despondent by the time I packed up for the day. But there was nothing to do but start fresh in the morning.
Morandi’s top dresser drawer is still filled as it was when he died: full of cigarettes, white paint and paint brushes that looked like they had been deliberately gnawed to achieve a specific tip.
The second day I woke up ready to try again. I had a realization the night before as I drifted off to sleep, so I entered the house with a new plan. As I opened up the shutters on the windows to let in the morning light, I had a chat with Maria Teresa Morandi. She was the last person to live in this house (in fact, she died here in 1994) and if there was anyone “guarding” this place, it was she. I had also heard a few stories about how she was the champion of her brother’s legacy after he passed away, so to my mind this made sense. I told her that my intention for being there and for the images I was making was the same as hers: to honor her brother’s legacy. I told her I needed her help and asked if she would guide me through the day. However crazy this may sound, after our little chat, my shoot day was absolutely glorious. No more blocks, just flow.
The studio is filled with arrangements of the bottles and vessels he’s best known for painting, but mixed in are smaller more personal items, like his spectacles, and the horse chestnuts he was known to keep in his pockets to superstitiously ward off colds and illness.
I literally reshot the whole house that second day with a lot of my time concentrated on Giorgio’s bedroom and studio. For much of his life, he was only here during the summer, but in his last four years he lived here full time. His bedroom felt even more spartan than the rest of the house, which seemed somehow fitting — nothing more than a twin bed and side table, chest of drawers, armoire, and some family photos. He was over six feet tall, so it’s hard to imagine he could fit in the tiny twin bed — I pictured his feet dangling over the end. I opened the top drawer of his dresser expecting to find socks or something similar, but it was filled with what seemed to be an inventory of his life’s necessities: tubes of paint (lots of titanium white), cigarettes, a coin purse, and paintbrushes that had been cut and customized so their tips were jagged, as if they’d been bitten. Religious art hung over his bed, and just across the hall was his studio.
Larger than any other room in the house, the studio had been kept as it was since Morandi’s death in 1963. His easels and painting supplies are still at the ready, and all the objects that are so familiar from his paintings sit waiting for their next arrangement. Among the groupings of objects I noticed small piles of conkers collected from the horse chestnut trees outside. I’ve heard he was superstitious and always had one or two of these in his pocket to ward away a cold. I asked Maria Teresa if that was true.
I chatted with Maria Teresa the entire day as I shot. I asked her questions and for her opinion on what areas were most potent and full of significance. And as I edited this chapter I kept her in mind as much as I did her brother. Morandi’s paintings were what brought me to their summer house, but my being able to create these images were in large part thanks to the blessing of Maria Teresa. Her spirit is palpable within their summer house and her purpose is unmistakable: to guard the family home and, most of all, to protect her brother’s legacy. I hope I have done justice to them both.
Learn more in Still Lives: In the Homes of Artists, Great and Unsung by Leslie Williamson, published by Rizzoli.