Being resilient enough to traverse the eras of art unscathed; or light enough to exist in a state of perpetual suspended time: these are the paths artists — perhaps only the greatest among them have taken to avoid growing old. Perhaps one path, perhaps the other, or even both. Giorgio Morandi certainly belongs to at least one of these categories, his painting, "tacitly faithful to itself, though different, through imperceptible variations", never ceased to interrogate the present, countering the frenzy of artistic languages with a rigor composed of bottles, bowls, and dusty tones. It is a poetics that Galleria d'Arte Maggiore G.A.M. is once again celebrating in the French capital, marking the fortieth anniversary of the renowned 1987 retrospective at the Hôtel de Ville in Paris, with the exhibition "Giorgio Morandi. A place of the infinite" (running until November 5 at 208 Boulevard Saint-Germain), thereby reconnecting the threads of an artistic journey that remains strikingly relevant.
The exhibition is structured as a series of intense visual comparisons, placing the Bolognese master’s canvases in relation with key figures of the late 20th century and contemporary art. It moves from a still life paired with the monochrome sensibility of Ettore Spalletti, revisiting the remarkable 2014 Bologna exhibition where the Abruzzian artist repainted the gallery walls to create a singular, ethereal atmosphere, to the intimate essentiality of Lee Ufan’s compositions. In the Korean artist’s work, displayed alongside a rare 1941 Still Life once owned by art historian Francesco Arcangeli, the sign becomes a measured gesture and an act of contemplation, revealing a shared drive toward a form of figuration that borders on conceptual abstraction.
The Parisian exhibition patj then explores the formal construction of the works through a dialogue with Josef Albers. The rigorous seriality with which Morandi arranges his everyday objects finds a geometric counterpart in the Homage to the Square series, where the layering of squares analyses colour perception and the articulation of space across different planes. Finally, Morandi’s luminous matter finds a reflection in the conceptual beacons of Lucio Fontana: his renowned Tagli do not reject painting but rather allow the surface to open onto a further dimension, transforming the canvas into a spatial gateway that echoes Morandi’s own aspiration to give phenomenal form to the invisible
Rounding out this survey - which is enriched by homages by Arman, Bertozzi & Casoni, César, and - is the simultaneous publication of the volume “Giorgio Morandi. Mark Rothko”, issued by the Calarota Foundation and Dario Cimorelli Editore. Conceived by Franco Calarota and developed with the contribution of the National Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Christopher Rothko, the text explores the profound and previously unexamined link between the floating colour fields of the American Abstract Expressionist master and the painting of Via Fondazza. Although departing from vastly different premises, both succeeded in converting the application of paint into a space devoid of time, demonstrating that for Morandi, painting was not merely an exercise in style, but a genuine, inexhaustible place of the infinite.
