A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say. —Italo Calvino
David Zwirner is pleased to present Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, curated by gallery Partner David Leiber. On view at the gallery’s 537 West 20th Street location, the exhibition explores the formal and visual affinities and contrasts between two of the twentieth century’s greatest painters: Josef Albers (1888–1976) and Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964).
Both Albers and Morandi are best known for their decades-long elaborations of singular motifs: from 1950 until his death in 1976, Albers employed his nested square format to experiment with endless chromatic combinations and perceptual effects, while Morandi, in his intimate still lifes and occasional landscapes, engaged viewers’ perceptual understanding and memory of everyday objects and spaces.
Image: Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), 1953 (detail)
The 20th Street gallery is open to the public with a limited number of visitors allowed into the exhibition spaces at a time, in accordance with city guidelines.
Tuesday to Friday, advance appointments are recommended but not required.
On Saturdays, the gallery is open by appointment only.
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Exhibition walkthrough with David Leiber and Laura Mattioli, art historian and Founder and President of the Center for Italian Modern Art (CIMA) in New York.
“Each was the real thing: diligent, serious, and, at the same time, poetic and lyrical. Each deliberately established limitations for his art, confining the vocabulary and regulating the format, and then extracted the maximum … toward a truly spiritual beauty.”
—Nicholas Fox Weber, “Slight Variations on Inviolable,” in Josef Albers, Museo Morandi, Bologna, 2005
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), 1955 (detail)
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), 1955 (detail)
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), c. 1954 (detail)
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life), c. 1954 (detail)
Josef Albers, 1976. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
Josef Albers, 1976. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
Giorgio Morandi, 1953. Photo by Herbert List
Giorgio Morandi, 1953. Photo by Herbert List
“Morandi’s statement that nothing is more abstract than reality overshadows … an almost scientific research and observation of color and light relationships.… Just like Morandi, Albers came to his identity indirectly. In these long series of parallel squares … Albers looked into what he referred to as ‘interaction of color.’”
—Peter Weiermair, “Josef Albers’s Exhibition at the Museo Morandi,” in Josef Albers, Museo Morandi, Bologna, 2005
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
“For Morandi, color defines forms and space.… Albers’s color fields, on the other hand, … merge into each other in the process of seeing, forming new connections.”
—Heinz Liesbrock, Giorgio Morandi: Landschaft, 2005
“One could be knowledgeable about color, but one could not always predict what would happen.… Every painting would be an experiment.”
—Jeannette Redensek, “Farbenfabeln: On the Origins and Development of the Homage to the Square,” in Josef Albers: Interaction, Villa Hügel, Essen, 2018
Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square, 1973
Oil on Masonite
16 x 16 inches (40.6 x 40.6 cm)
16 3/4 x 16 3/4 x 1 3/8 inches (42.5 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm)
“Painting is color acting.… Acting color loses identity, appears as another color, lighter or dark, more or less intensive, brighter or duller, warmer or cooler … higher and nearer or deeper and farther away.”
—Josef Albers, studio note, 1950s
Josef Albers, 1960. Courtesy the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
Josef Albers
Study for Homage to the Square, 1973
Oil on Masonite
16 x 16 inches (40.6 x 40.6 cm)
16 3/4 x 16 3/4 x 1 3/8 inches (42.5 x 42.5 x 3.5 cm)
“Painting is color acting.… Acting color loses identity, appears as another color, lighter or dark, more or less intensive, brighter or duller, warmer or cooler … higher and nearer or deeper and farther away.”
—Josef Albers, studio note, 1950s
Josef Albers, 1960. Courtesy the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation
“There is no color tone or scrap of line that Albers did not see as full of latent meaning.… Calmly and systematically receptive, like Morandi looking at bottles, he found multitude and stability in a few forms.”
—Nicholas Fox Weber, “The Artist as Alchemist,” 1988
“Nothing, or almost nothing in this world is truly new, what’s important is the new, different perspective an artist chooses to look at the world.”
—Giorgio Morandi, 1926
Sanford Roth, Giorgio Morandi, c. 1946–62, scan from a 35mm negative. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Beulah Roth Bequest. © Museum Associates/LACMA
Sanford Roth, Giorgio Morandi, c. 1946–62, scan from a 35mm negative. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Beulah Roth Bequest. © Museum Associates/LACMA
Giorgio Morandi
Fiori (Flowers), 1947
Oil on canvas
11 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5/8 inches (29.3 x 21.6 x 1.6 cm)
Framed: 15 1/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches (38.7 x 31.1 x 4.4 cm)
“One can travel the world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.”
—Giorgio Morandi, quoted in Michael Kimmelman, “Looking Long and Hard at Morandi,” The New York Times, 2004
Giorgio Morandi, 1955. © 1955 Leo Lionni. Used with permission of the Lionni family
Giorgio Morandi
Fiori (Flowers), 1947
Oil on canvas
11 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 5/8 inches (29.3 x 21.6 x 1.6 cm)
Framed: 15 1/4 x 12 1/4 x 1 3/4 inches (38.7 x 31.1 x 4.4 cm)
“One can travel the world and see nothing. To achieve understanding it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.”
—Giorgio Morandi, quoted in Michael Kimmelman, “Looking Long and Hard at Morandi,” The New York Times, 2004
Giorgio Morandi, 1955. © 1955 Leo Lionni. Used with permission of the Lionni family
“Through an admixture of visual grammar and language his pictures reveal startling insights: What happens when gracefulness is juxtaposed against awkwardness? Is human ineptitude thereby understood, tolerated, or ennobled? He juggles disproportionate but equal things and develops exquisite tensions.”
—Wayne Thiebaud, “A Fellow Painter’s View of Giorgio Morandi,” in Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings, David Zwirner Books, 2017
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Installation view, Albers and Morandi: Never Finished, David Zwirner, New York, 2021
Prints by Giorgio Morandi
“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”
—Italo Calvino
Giorgio Morandi's Studio, Grizzana. Bologna, 2017. Photo by Francois Halard. © Francois Halard
Giorgio Morandi's Studio, Grizzana. Bologna, 2017. Photo by Francois Halard. © Francois Halard
To inquire about works by Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi
