Still Life with Nine Objects

Still Life with nine objects is an original black and white etching realized by Giorgio Morandi in 1954.

Hand signed and date on lower right.

Numbered in pencil on the lower left. First state, Edition of 77 (77/100).

Includes gilded frame.

It is considered one of the most iconic works by Morandi. The artwork was engraved for the Associazione Amatori d'Arte, Rome.

Reference: Catalogue Raisonné "The graphic work of Giorgio Morandi" by L. Vitali, No. 115.

Born in Bologna in 1890, Giorgio Morandi is one of the most representative figures of 20th Century Italian art. Morandi’s vocation for engraving was not something that surfaced when he reached artistic maturity. It progressed in parallel with his painting.

The engraver grew alongside the painter, as shown by the fact that his first plates, now lost together with many of his paintings from that period, go back to the year 1911, when Morandi was just 21 years old.

“…For Morandi, an etching was not just a picture on a metal plate, half waybetween a hastily jotted note and a brilliant aside, and with all the appearance of having been improvised. For him, etchings were things that could not have been produced any other way, things that you thought about deeply, sought after and pondered. Adventuredidn’t come into it, nor did hopingfor the best, with the help of chance and the unpredictable effects of acid  […] Morandi’s engravings stem from a profound meditation on his subjects, maturing in his mind long before he started etching.” (Lamberto Vitali,L’opera graficadi Giorgio Morandi (Giorgio Morandi’s graphic works, Einaudi, Turin 1957).