Giorgio Morandi Quotes

When most Italian artists of my own generation were afraid to be too 'modern,' too 'international' in their style, not 'national' or 'imperial' enough, I was still left in peace, perhaps because I demanded so little recognition. My privacy was thus my protection and, in the eyes of the Grand Inquisitors of Italian art, I remained a provincial professor of etching, at the Fine Art Academy in Bologna.

...[enabled] to touch the core, the essence of things. Even in as simple a subject, a great painter can achieve a majesty of vision and an intensity of feeling to which we immediately respond. [1937, referring to a still life by Cézanne and a river-sight with sandbank by Monet ]

My only source of instruction has always been the study of works, whether of the past or contemporary artists, which can offer us an answer to our questions if we formulate these properly.. .I would never be of much use as a guide or instructor, nor have I ever wanted to be one, even when I have been asked to undertake the job [still, Morandi was art professor - etchings - at the Art Academy of Bologna for many years]. [the text of this interview was later examined by Morandi and approved in the English translation]

The feelings and images aroused by the visible world are very difficult to express or are perhaps inexpressible with words because they are determined by forms, colors, space and light.

..my own paintings of that period (1916 – 1919) remain pure still-life compositions and never suggest any metaphysical, surrealist, psychological, or literary considerations at all [reacting on similarities with the art of Carrà, and de Chirico, suggested by the interviewer]. My milliners' dummies, for instance, are objects like others and have not been selected to suggest symbolic representations of human beings of legendary or mythological characters. The only titles that I chose for these paintings were conventional, like 'Still Life, Flowers or Landscape', without any implications of strangeness of an unreal world [as in Surrealism or in 'Pittura Metafisica' of De Chirico].

As regards my paintings of similar compositions I cannot give you any indication [about possible 'variants' in his works] because I'm afraid I've never made a note of where my paintings have ended up.. .I am always at work and work is my sole passion. And unfortunately I've become aware that I must always start from the beginning, and ought to burn what I've done in the past.

A white bottle is all that remain.

This enabled me to understand the need to abandon myself totally to my instinct, trusting my own energy and forgetting any preconceived style while I work.

Among the painters of our day who have helped me develop are Carlo Carra [famous Futurist painter] and Ardengo Soffici; their work and writings have in my opinion been a beneficial influence on where Italian art is going today.

I also believe there is nothing more surreal and nothing more abstract than reality.

I suppose I remain.. ..a believer in Art for Art's sake rather than in Art for the sake of religion, of social justice or of national glory. Nothing is more alien to me than an art which sets out to serve other purposes than those implied in the work of art in itself..

..before I die I should like to bring two paintings to completion. What matters is to touch the limit, the essence of things.

..it is only in this way, or almost, that a portrait can be painted today [because] all the things punt into the picture have the same importance, they are in the right place.