In Spring 2015, the photographer Joel Meyerowitz sat at the work table in Giorgio Morandi's Bologna home, in the exact spot where the painter had sat for over 40 years making his quiet, sublime still lifes. Here Meyerowitz looked at, touched, studied and connected with the more than 250 objects that Morandi painted. Using only the warm natural light in the room, he photographed Morandi's objects: vases, shells, pigment-filled bottles, silk flowers, tins, funnels, watering cans. In the photographs, each object sits on Morandi's table, which still bears the marks the painter drew to set the positions of his subjects. In the background is the same paper that Morandi left on the wall, now brittle and yellow with age. Meyerowitz's portraits of these dusty, aged objects are not only works of art themselves, but they offer insight into the humble subjects that Morandi transformed into his subtle and luminous paintings. Joel Meyerowitz (born 1938) is a street photographer and portrait and landscape photographer. The New York native began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate of the use of color at a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. Many of his photographs are icons of modern photography, and he is considered one of the most influential modern photographers and representatives of the New Color Photography of the 1960s and '70s. His work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions around the world and is in the collections of The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art, New York and many other museums worldwide.

The fulgurating power of creative imagination - Imaginatio Creatrix - setting in motion the Human Condition within the-unity-of-everything there-is-alive is the key to the rebirth of philosophy. From as early as 1971 (see the third volume of the Analecta Husserliana series, The Phenomenological Realism of the Possible Worlds, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, ed.), Imaginatio Creatrix has been the leitmotif for the research work of the World Phenomenology Institute (now published in eighty-three Analecta Husserliana volumes), one that is eliciting echoes from all around. Husserl's diagnosis of a crisis in Western science and culture, the inspiration of much of postmodern phenomenology, has yielded place to a wave of scientific discovery, technological invention, and change in societal life, individual lifestyles, the arts, etc. These throw a glaring light on human creative genius and the crucial role of the imagination that gives it expression. This present collection is an instance of that expression and the response it evokes. It manifests the role of imagination in forming and interpreting our world -in-transformation in a new way and opens our eyes to marvel at the new world on the way. Papers by: Semiha Akinci, John Baldacchino, Angela Ales Bello, Elif Cirakman, Tracy Colony, Carmen Cozma, Charles de Brantes, Mamuka G. Dolidze, Edward Domagala, Shannon Driscoll, Nader E1-Bizri, Ignacy Fiut, William Franke, Elga Freiberga, Beata Furgalska, Nicoletta Ghigi, Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, David Grünberg, Oliver W. Holmes, Milan Jaros, Rolf Kühn, Maija Kule, Rimma Kurenkova, Matthew Landrus, Nancy Mardas, David Martinez, William D. Melaney, Mieczyslaw, Pawel Migon, Martin Nkafu Nkemnkia, Leszek Pyra, W. Kim Rogers, Bruce Ross, Osvaldo Rossi, Julio E. Rubio, Diane G. Scillia, Mina Sehdev, Dennis E. Skocz, Mariola Sulkowska, Robert D. Sweeney, Jan Szmyd, Piero Trupia, Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka, Richard T. Webster.

One of the most beloved painters of the twentieth century, Giorgio Morandi created works that continue to exert their mysterious power on viewers worldwide. This publication focuses on the period from 1948 to 1964, during which Morandi developed and refined his investigations of serial, reductive, and permutational forms and compositions, a body of work that has had a profound influence on twentieth-century art and painting. Included here are five of the ten iconic “yellow cloth” paintings from 1952, a series featured prominently in the historic 1998 exhibition at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, and numerous late paintings by the Italian master. Lavishly reproduced, these immersive plates draw attention to the idiosyncratic perspectival and color-driven decisions that give the work its abstract power. The catalogue is published on the occasion of the 2015 exhibition of Morandi’s paintings from this period at David Zwirner, New York—which, according to The New York Times, represent “lucid perfection, at once cerebral and impassioned.” It marked the first major presentation of the artist’s late work in America since the acclaimed 2008 retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In addition to an essay by Laura Mattioli and a foreword by David Leiber, who organized the exhibition, this catalogue includes a fantastic array of contributions by contemporary artists: John Baldessari, Lawrence Carroll, Vija Celmins, Mark Greenwold, Liu Ye, Wayne Thiebaud, Alexi Worth, and Zeng Fanzhi. They offer their personal responses to Morandi’s work and to the Zwirner exhibition in particular. Working in different media across many disciplines, this diverse list of contributors is a testament to the reach of Morandi’s paintings and their influence on contemporary art.

An unprecedented catalogue exploring the formal and visual affinities and contrasts between Josef Albers and Giorgio Morandi—two of modern art’s greatest painters. Rarely seen together, the artworks of Josef Albers (1888–1976) and Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) share many similarities. Although they never met, both artists worked in series as they explored difference and potential through their distinctive treatment of color, shape, form, and morphology. They were also both influenced by Cezanne. As master illusionists and experts in proportion, they tackled similar conceits from different perspectives. Albers focused on the effects of subtle or bold changes and interactions in color, while Morandi made still lifes that treat simple objects as a cast of characters on a stage, exploring their relationship in space. Published on the occasion of the critically acclaimed exhibition Albers and Morandi: Never Finished at David Zwirner New York in 2021, the book illuminates the visual conversation between these two artists. With the exhibition hailed by The New Yorker’s Peter Schjeldahl as “one of the best … I’ve ever seen,” this publication brings this unusual, thought-provoking pairing to your home. Gorgeous reproductions are accompanied by a roundtable about form and color between the exhibition’s curator, David Leiber; Heinz Liesbrock, the director of the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat Bottrop; and Nicholas Fox Weber, the executive director of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, as well as an essay by Laura Mattioli, the Morandi expert and founder of the Center for Italian Modern Art.

Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-74), a woman artist and scientist, surmounted meager origins and limited formal education to become one of the most acclaimed anatomical sculptors of the Enlightenment. The Lady Anatomist tells the story of her arresting life and times, in light of the intertwined histories of science, gender, and art that complicated her rise to fame in the eighteenth century. Examining the details of Morandi’s remarkable life, Rebecca Messbarger traces her intellectual trajectory from provincial artist to internationally renowned anatomical wax modeler for the University of Bologna’s famous medical school. Placing Morandi’s work within its cultural and historical context, as well as in line with the Italian tradition of anatomical studies and design, Messbarger uncovers the messages contained within Morandi’s wax inscriptions, part complex theories of the body and part poetry. Widely appealing to those with an interest in the tangled histories of art and the body, and including lavish, full-color reproductions of Morandi’s work, The Lady Anatomist is a sophisticated biography of a true visionary.

Each book in Taschen's Basic Art movement and genre series includes a detailed introduction with approximately 30 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, sporting, etc.) that took place during the time period.