Giorgio Morandi. Mark Rothko.: The Calarota Foundation presents a volume exploring Franco Calarota’s reflections, with contributions from leading scholars and international institutions, including the National Gallery of Art and the Rothko Foundation, represented by Christopher Rothko.
The Calarota Foundation presents the publication of a volume bringing together an unprecedented dialogue, as well as the development of a possible exhibition, between two pivotal figures in the history of art: Giorgio Morandi and Mark Rothko.
The format chosen to embark on this narrative, visual and conceptual journey, with its surprising implications, is a 304-page volume that gives concrete form to an intuition conceived by Franco Calarota, who has come to believe that, beyond their evident differences in geography, style and temperament, the two great artists shared a profound spiritual affinity, rooted in silence, light and inner tension. The dialogue between Giorgio Morandi and Mark Rothko is constructed through an ideal selection of works and concepts and is therefore presented in the form of an exhibition. Precisely because an exhibition requires one or more curators, Roberta Perazzini Calarota and her daughter Alessia Calarota entrusted this unprecedented journey to two professionals who have worked within major international exhibition contexts, at opposite ends of the contemporary art landscape: the United States and China. They are Renato Miracco, one of the curators of the 2008 Morandi exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and Lorenzo Balbi, Director (from 2017 to 2026) of the Morandi Museum and curator of the exhibition "Giorgio Morandi. Solo "in Shanghai, currently on view. Asia represents a territory in which Galleria d’Arte Maggiore g.a.m. has been a pioneer in the Morandi market.
Giorgio Morandi and Mark Rothko’s artworks seem to recognize each other from afar. It is as if they shared a secret language made up of silences, waiting, and inner resonances. A still life that becomes meditation and a color field that becomes presence both draw upon a common gesture: removing, subtracting, reducing to the point of revealing what is left when everything superfluous vanishes. Their affinity does not lie in the forms but in the intention: seeking an essence that is neither object nor color but a condition of being.
This volume, enriched with contributions from leading scholars, invites readers to join this dialogue and let themselves be guided by two different yet surprisingly similar voices. They will discover how painting, stripped of the superfluous, can become an experience of deep listening and inner revelation.
