Still Life (Cups and Boxes) 1951

Giorgio Morandi made this painting of cups and boxes with oil on canvas. Look at how the surfaces in the painting are built with such quiet, meditative strokes. You can almost feel him, moving the paint around, adding to the stillness and simplicity of the composition. The color palette is muted, almost like a memory, full of soft browns, whites, and grays that create a sense of calm. Morandi plays with the relationships between objects; the geometric forms of the boxes contrast with the curves of the cups and that adorable little green spiky thing, creating a kind of silent dialogue. The paint is applied thinly, which gives the painting a dry, matte surface, and somehow emphasizes the quietness and austerity of the scene. You can see this in the way he renders the shadows. This painting resonates with the work of other still life painters, like Chardin, but Morandi brings his own unique sensitivity and a modern sensibility to the genre. It’s a reminder that painting is an exchange of ideas that extends across time.