“I personally couldn’t care less about a bunch of bottles – but I’m sure glad Morandi could”.  Chuck Close.

I once visited Morandi’s small studio in Bologna. It was something of a pilgrimage for me because I had loved his calm, meditative paintings of simple domestic objects for many years.  There can be few painters with such a recognizable style, a style applied to such a narrow range of subjects.

This small exhibition at the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) focused on Morandi’s paintings from the 1930s, a relatively unproductive decade for the painter and one in which he completed fewer than a hundred paintings. Work from that era is mostly held in private collections and only rarely exhibited publicly.  It was wonderful to see these paintings, a reminder of how an artist’s repeated engagement with familiar objects can provoke a much wider and deeper contemplation.

CIMA opened only two years ago and is a great addition to New York’s gallery scene. It’s something of a secret treasure.  It occupies the fourth floor of a nondescript building in SoHo and only visitors with an appointment are admitted.  Once inside, a large, elegant gallery, all clean, white lines provides a lovely setting for paintings and sculpture.