Giorgio Morandi: Works on Paper at Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

Morandi is often presented as a somewhat reclusive figure whose works embody ‘eternal’ and ‘timeless’ artistic values. However, the fact that Morandi passed through the ranks of F.T. Marinetti’s Futurist movement, exhibited alongside Novecento artists such as Mario Sironi and was affiliated with Giorgio de Chirico’s Scuola metafisica, reveals him to have been a far more complex and multi-layered figure than might be supposed. Organised in collaboration with Bologna’s Galleria d’Arte Maggiore, and with loans from a number of private collections as well as from the Estorick Collection, Lines of Poetry focuses on works on paper, including a large section devoted to the artist’s etchings. Entirely self-taught as a printmaker, Morandi began to produce etchings in 1912 and quickly mastered the technique, coming to consider it an important vehicle for artistic expression, and going on to hold the Chair in Printmaking at Bologna’s Accademia di Belle Arti for over twenty years. Although restricted in terms of subject matter, these works reveal the artist’s great stylistic versatility and thirst for experimentation through their different formats and incorporation of a wide range of mark-making processes. Also included in the show are a number of watercolours, works that are rarely seen in the United Kingdom, and which therefore make this exhibition a truly unmissable occasion for any admirer of Morandi.