Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi was born in 1890 in Bologna, Italy, where he lived until his death in 1964. Over the course of his five-decade career, Morandi was most prolific during the postwar years from the late 1940s until the 1960s, when he executed more than half of his entire output of paintings. Remaining dedicated to the repertoire of subjects that had occupied him since the early 1910s, including tabletop still lifes of bottles, boxes, vases and flowers, as well as occasional landscapes, his variations on a given compositional motif became more persistent, nuanced, and abstract in the later part of his life. Through subtle shifts in color, tone, scale, composition, and mark-making, Morandi was able to convey the ever-changing perceptual understanding and memory of the objects and spaces one encounters. In 1993, the Museo Morandi was established in Bologna, Italy, and is currently located in the Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna.

David Leiber is a partner at David Zwirner and organized the exhibition Giorgio Morandi at the gallery.

Laura Mattioli is the founder and president of the Center for Italian Modern Art in New York, and serves on its advisory committee. An art historian, curator, and collector, Mattioli specializes in twentieth-century art and has served since 1983 as the curator of the Gianni Mattioli Collection, considered one of the most important holdings of Italian avant-garde and modern art.