Artist Index

Landscape Paesaggio, circa 1920's, oil on board, 10 x 8 1/4 in (25.4 x 21 cm), signed lower right, PROVENANCE: From a private collector Pennsylvania, ART NOTATION: In paintings of 1931, pushing his objects to the point of abstraction, but never beyond, Morandi thoroughly shook off traces of nineteenth-century nostalgia. This is a reaction to the increasingly hopeless political situation, as "the most desperate freedom" of an Italian artist around 1930. In paintings as late as 1936 Morandi continued this obliteration of the clarity of form. It would not be wrong to call these abstractions, for only the merest sensation of landscape remains as Morandi. He created paintings that are little else than basic architectural structures, purely formal compositions with nothing specifically Italian about them.