Beijing's M Woods Gallery holds Giorgio Morandi exhibition

The China debut exhibition of celebrated Italian artist Giorgio Morandi closed at Beijing's M WOODS Gallery in the 798 Art Zone on Thursday.

Titled "Giorgio Morandi: The Poetics of Stillness", the exhibition was divided into four sections of transitions, recurrence, landscapes and late drawings. The approach is not chronological, but according to the reference of Morandi's still life compositions.

Morandi is known for small- scale and contemplative landscapes and still life depictions of commonplace objects, encompassing bottles, vases, flowers and landscapes.

"Morandi, in many ways, his art and individual will help us re- learn how to look - how to look at the things that we've forgotten, how to look at the objects of things that we believe are insignificant, but are actually quite important to us," said Victor Wang, exhibition curator.

The section of "landscapes" highlights Morandi's long- term investigation into natural scenery, and his innovative landscape paintings and etchings that reveal his fascination with urban landscapes.

Giorgio Morandi, born in 1890 in Bologna, spent nearly all his life there, working quietly in a modest studio. The artist became famous in recent years for his color palettes that were inspired by a summer visit to Grizzana.

"I think the colors really speak to people, but also the colors themselves really act like similes or metaphors or larger events and emotions that were occurring at the time. And Morandi's colors you often see a reflection of that within the grays. Another important thing to note that it was Morandi's teaching assistant who said that his colors reflect the seasons. So when you see Morandi's yellows, reds, oranges, she says those are the colors of Italy's summer. And when you see the grays, the blues, it's like the fog t hat covers the city during winter. So I think the colors really extract the type of emotion and sensitivity from people, and they've been able to then be applied to various fields such as architecture, fashion, and elsewhere, but I think there's a type of intimacy there that people can relate to," said Wang.

Morandi had a dozen books on traditional Chinese art. Although without direct evidence, some Chinese scholars have compared the st illness of Morandi's works with the peaceful expression of Song Dynasty paintings created centuries earlier.