Pitcher c. 1938

Frank Fumagalli made this picture of a pitcher out of watercolor, in a way that makes the object really pop! The pitcher is blue and gray with a sort of beige on the inside, and you can tell that Fumagalli spent some time getting to know it before he painted it. What kind of blue is that, anyway? A simple but direct cobalt? The gray is soft, as though he was trying to see it not just as a thing but as a feeling. I know what it's like to paint something and feel like you're getting to know it as you go. The pitcher has these little blue decorations on it, like the artist has added his own flair to it. This makes me think of Morandi, who painted so many bottles and pitchers over and over again. He really took the time to understand the objects he was looking at, to study them. Artists are always building on each other's work, seeing what they can learn from the past. It's like one big conversation, across time and space.