On Morandi’s exquisitely serene art as a distillation of the tumultuous 20th century

This volume positions Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) as a paradigmatic 20th-century figure: a man who lived through two world wars and experienced the full impact of the era’s disillusionments. Against this bleak backdrop, he sought stringent order and formal harmony, while leaving room for uncertainty and surprise. This clothbound volume spotlights the artist’s paintings and works on paper from the 1920s to the '60s, as well as a wealth of unpublished documents and photographs recently excavated from the Morandi family archives. Marilena Pasquali, an art historian and leading Morandi expert, interprets these materials, connecting them with the arc of his career. Alongside writings by other art historians, Pasquali casts Morandi’s art as an ongoing response to the tumultuous, dispiriting times in which he lived.