While waiting for the 60th International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia 2024
Maggiore g.a.m. Project Room is pleased to announce the reopening to the public of the exhibition "Giorgio Morandi. The Balance of Signs" hosted inside the Giorgio Morandi Library, in the magnificent setting of ACP - Palazzo Franchetti. The exhibition, successfully inaugurated in the summer of 2023, is reopened due to the extraordinary enthusiasm and interest shown by the public. The decision to extend accessibility will allow an even greater number of passionate and curious visitors to immerse themselves in Giorgio Morandi's artistic universe and appreciate his poetic and refined engraving technique."Giorgio Morandi. The Balance of Signs" highlights the Master’s most authentic research through the lens of his works on paper - etchings, drawings, and watercolors - to which he dedicated himself with excellent technical skill and poetic flair throughout his career. The exhibition explores the main subjects that characterized his work: the landscapes of his hometown, the refined flower vases, and, above all, the still lifes that accompanied him throughout his life, always in perfect balance between delicate signs and intense chiaroscuro.
Alongside the valuable books available for consultation at the Giorgio Morandi Library, a place to explore the artist's poetics in a transversal and current way, the exhibition highlights the Master's most authentic research. Etchings, drawings, and watercolors become silent but powerful revealers of one of the benchmarks of his art: suggesting an entire poetic universe through a studied economy of subjects as well as of signs. It is in these works that the evocative ability of Morandi's intimate and meditated world emerges in its essentiality: the etchings show the chromatic play limited to the contrast between the engraved sign and paper, between the hatching and intentionally left white spaces in the composition; the drawings show how the pencil leaves its imprint always light and fast yet eternal; the watercolors show how just the color is capable of defining forms, volumes, and spaces.
Giorgio Morandi started to dedicate himself to etchings as early as 1910-11, developing that language and those contents that would accompany him for the rest of his life. Despite the economy of his subjects, the still lifes and landscapes that characterize his artistic journey stand out for an ever-different expressive intensity. His aim was to investigate all possible all the possible formal balances, the tonal variations that different degrees of chiaroscuro can create, achieving different and excellent results. Not by chance, Morandi is considered one of the greatest engravers of the XXth century, and in 1930, he became Professor of Engraving Techniques at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna. His lessons continued until 1956.
Morandi never subordinated the art of engraving to painting. Since the Venice Biennale in 1928, the year he participated for the first time, Morandi has always selected his etchings in order to present his research to the international audience of the Biennale. Over the years, the results he obtained continue to be sublime, as does the desire to thoroughly investigate the objects and places around him. This means analyzing how to modify tonal shades, how to calculate the hatching weaving and experimenting with ever-different compositions based on luminous reflections. Thanks to his incredible know-how and mastery, Morandi was awarded in 1953 the international recognition of the GrandPrizeforthe Engravingat the Sao Paulo Biennale in Brazil.
Visitors to the exhibition can also seize the opportunity to become friends of the Giorgio Morandi Library and ACP - Art Capital Partners by joining the membership program. Members enjoy exclusive benefits, such as the opportunity to consult the volumes of the Giorgio Morandi Library, receive special invitations to vernissages and events, and take advantage of privileged discounts on items available in the bookshop. The initiative aims to engage art enthusiasts in a deeper and more interactive way, creating a community of individuals interested in exploring and deepening their knowledge of the art world, from Giorgio Morandi to other artists featured in exhibitions organized by ACP - Palazzo Franchetti.