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©
VEGAP, Madrid
Giorgio Morandi

Flowers

1942
Oil on canvas.
30.5 x 26 cm
Carmen Thyssen Collection
Inv. no. (
CTB.1999.37
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 54 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 55 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku 56 Postpop rooms: Ayako Rokakku Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
This painting-created in the difficult autumn of 1942, hence the shadowy colours with their faint highlights-, forms part of a small series of works in which Morandi used a bunch of zinnias as his model, exploring their gradual withering.

We know that Morandi preferred to use silk flowers, made with great skill in 18th-century Bologna, and that after the war he no longer painted fresh flowers precisely because of their transient nature, swiftly subject to the ravages of time, in contrast to the subject of his composition in which he sought a "motionless mirror" in which to reflect his inner vision, the changes in his thoughts and feelings. The model must never change, precisely because it is the artist who changes constantly (and for the same reason, after 1927-1928, Morandi made no further portraits (not even of his beloved sisters), nor did he depict figures. 

As in the prints of flowers made around 1930 (particularly those devoted to the subject of zinnias in a vase), 1 in the present canvas Morandi accepts the confrontation with the most fragile, ephemeral natural object, capturing it precisely at the point when it passes from full life to rapid, progressive decay. 

Until a few years ago, the present work was in the same Italian collection as another painting of a similar subject. The two works were exhibited together in various exhibitions organised by the Museo Morandi, precisely in order to emphasise the artist's interest in the expiration of time as seen in the transition from one canvas to the other. In this painting, the first of the two, the flowers are still fresh and the bunch fits snugly into the vase, creating a compact, firm composition. The image is frontal, almost in relief, imposing in its silent presence. In the second painting the vase disappears and the eye concentrates on the drooping stems and the fading corollas which are now more open, discomposed, undone.

In the Flowers now in the Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection, the tense, nervous brushstrokes move the petals as if their skin were caressed by a secret breeze wafting from the background, a decidedly Morandian background in the intensity of the vibration, and the way it imposes itself as a fragment of pure painting, offering itself as the interior domain inhabited by the appearance of the flowers.

Marilena Pasquali

20th CenturyPaintingOilcanvas
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  • Commercial use
Private and/or didactic use
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©

VEGAP, Madrid

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Flowers. Flores, 1942
Flowers
Giorgio Morandi

©

VEGAP, Madrid

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However, photographed works are protected by copyright. Therefore, regardless of the terms of use of the photographs set out below by the Foundation, it will be necessary to obtain a license fromVEGAP (Visual Entidad de Gestión de Artistas Plásticos www.vegap.es) or from the corresponding collective management organizations in the country where the work is going to be used or, where appropriate, from the holder of their rights in order to reproduce or exploit the work.

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