Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), widely acknowledged as a major Italian painter of the 20th century, built a reputation based especially on his sensitive still-life subjects.

Giorgio Morandi attained stature as one of the most prominent Italian painters of the 20th century, though he lived humbly and developed his art outside the mainstream of Modernism. Born in Bologna on July 20, 1890, he remained closely attached to that city for his entire life. In 1907, after having spent nearly a year working in his father's export office, the teenaged Morandi enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Bologna, where he studied until 1913.

While at the academy Morandi became interested in 19th-century artists as well as Renaissance masters, showing particular respect for Paul Cezanne and Piero della Francesca. Unfortunately he destroyed most of his youthful work. His earliest extant picture, a landscape in part influenced by Macchiaioli painting, an Italian version of Impressionism...