Vatican Museums

Entirely dedicated to Giorgio Morandi, the room offers a valuable collection of paintings and engravings realised by the artist between the 1920s and the 1950s. Following his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna and initially fascinated by Cézanne and the “primitives”, at the end of the 1910s Morandi participated with Carrà and de Chirico in the Metaphysical art movement. From the beginning of his career he concentrated on landscapes and still lifes: subjects repeated in search of a formal synthesis and absolute clarity of composition. For his landscapes he favoured the outskirts of Bologna, familiar places that he depicted without human presence. Also in his still lifes, the same simple objects appear: bottles, empty vases and small containers, that Morandi selects and groups together, making them the key figures of the pictorial scene.