Giorgio Morandi: Time Suspended

After Conrad Marca-Relli, a new chapter devoted to the great Italian and international masters of the 20th century

The book Giorgio Morandi. Il tempo sospeso (The Suspended Time) shows how, as a man and an artist, Morandi (1890-1964) was firmly anchored to the 20th century: he lived through two world wars and experienced the full impact of the consequent disillusionment, loss of certainties, and collapse of all beliefs. To stem such loss of human direction, he sought a mental order, a harmony of form, a material that could become light. And yet he never lost the thrill of uncertainty, which we see in his every work in the form of expectancy and suspension.

The book presents a selection of paintings and works on paper from the ’20s to the ’60s, retracing Morandi’s artistic career and helping expand our understanding of his “difficult and secret” art, to paraphrase Cesare Brandi. The intense juxtaposition of some of Morandi’s “variants” points to some new critical insights, as does the display of some unpublished documents that have recently emerged from the family archives.