Giorgio Morandi Italian, 1890-1964

Giorgio Morandi was born on 20 July 1890 in Bologna, Italy, at Via delle Lame 57. After the death of his father, in 1910, he moved into an apartment at Via Fondazza 36 with his mother, Maria Maccaferri (died 1950), and his three sisters, Anna (1895-1989), Dina (1900-1977), and Maria Teresa (1906-1994). He would live in this building with them for the rest of his life, moving to a different apartment in 1933 and in 1935 acquiring the studio that has been preserved as part of the Morandi Museum.

Morandi died on 18 June 1964 in his flat at Via Fondazza. His last signed painting was dated February of that year.

Morandi's work has been the subject of major retrospectives and traveling solo exhibitions at institutions including the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, which traveled to the New Burlington Galleries, London (1954); Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (1964); Royal Academy of the Arts, London, which traveled to the Musée National d’art Moderne, Paris, and the Rotonda della Besana, Milan (1970); Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, which traveled to the Kharkiv Art Museum, Kharkiv, Ukraine (1973); San Francisco Museum of Art, which traveled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Des Moines Art Center, Iowa (1981); Museum of Modern Art, Kamakura, which traveled to the Fukuyama Museum of Art, and the National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto, all in Japan (1989); Musée Maillol, Paris, which traveled to Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil (1997); Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, which traveled to IVAM - Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Valencia (1999); Tate Modern, London, which traveled to the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2001-02); The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which traveled to the Museo d’Arte Moderna di Bologna, Italy (2008); Museo d’Arte Città di Lugano, Switzerland (2012); and the BOZAR - Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2013).