Exhibition

A Still Life: Paul Coldwell in Dialogue with Giorgio Morandi

6 Oct 2021 – 19 Dec 2021

Regular hours

Wednesday
11:00 – 18:00
Thursday
11:00 – 20:00
Friday
11:00 – 18:00
Saturday
11:00 – 18:00
Sunday
12:00 – 17:00

Cost of entry

Adult: £7.50. Concessions: £5.50. National Art Pass: £3.75. Free entry to Estorick members, under 18s and full-time students with valid NUS card. All tickets must be booked in advance.

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Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art

London, United Kingdom

Travel Information

  • Highbury & Islington
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A Still Life: Paul Coldwell in Dialogue with Giorgio Morandi, opens on 6 October in our top two galleries. ⠀

Featuring works by Giorgio Morandi with responses by British artist Paul Coldwell, this display promises to be a fascinating interaction between the two artists. ⠀

About

This autumn, our entire collection of modern Italian art will go on show throughout the museum’s six galleries in a new exhibition, Estorick Collection Uncut. The top two galleries will be devoted to works by Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964), and new responses to these by British artist Paul Coldwell (b.1952) in a new display, A Still Life: Paul Coldwell in Dialogue with Giorgio Morandi.

Coldwell’s prints, sculptures and poems, all created in London under lockdown conditions during 2020-21, will be shown alongside the Estorick’s holding of Morandi’s etchings and drawings. Coldwell finds parallels between his own lockdown experience and Morandi’s self-imposed restricted life in Bologna, where he lived and worked. Morandi rarely travelled, and his studio-cum-bedroom in the apartment he shared with his sisters provided the setting for his intimate still lifes. As Coldwell notes, “What for others might be seen as limitations, for Morandi became creative opportunities. His work speaks of the capacity of the imagination to escape from confinement, a sentiment that I hope might be found in my work as well.” Coldwell’s own plaster and wood sculptures, prints and poems explore lockdown.

Coldwell’s fascination with Morandi began after learning of his approach to printmaking. This entailed assembling still life objects on makeshift shelves, regrouping them for days as dust settled, and finally drawing an image on a plate, before making a single immersion in acid. Coldwell points out: “It completely reversed the model of the printmaker as one who is wedded to the print room and proposed an altogether more conceptual approach. To view Morandi’s prints as fully realised pictures in their own right, gave me confidence by showing that there is nothing to prevent printmaking being of equal importance to painting or sculpture.”

A limited edition boxed set of Coldwell’s poems with photographs of his sculptures will be available to buy in our shop and online.

Exhibiting artistsToggle

Paul Coldwell

Giorgio Morandi

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