Secluded, Giorgio Morandi lived and worked in Bologna. He specialized in still lifes on small format canvases. His pictures display a limited inventory of objects that were to be found in his studio. The fact that the bottles and jars were covered in dust didn’t bother the painter at all; on the contrary he prized the sometimes-dull surfaces without highlights that he painted.

Morandi constantly rearranged the objects on the table. Looking at these unremarkable objects was for him like looking at a world. After thinking about the composition for a long time he often painted his pictures in just two hours. He described painting as „una cosa mentale“ – an intellectual affair.

Now and then Morandi would also paint landscapes. These were almost all painted in the Apennine village of Grizzana, where, from the 1940s onwards, the painter often stayed. In 1960 he even had a small house built there. With generous brushstrokes–quite similar to the still lifes–the outline of the house in the landscape is painted in a summary way so that it becomes almost abstract.

After the war Dr. Heinz Keller, the keeper of the Winterthur museum at the time, became friends with Morandi. The Kunstmuseum Winterthur owes its collection of numerous Morandi works to this friendship.