Venice (Italy).By carefully observing the programming of the Tornabuoni gallery in Florence, Milan and Paris, it appears quite clearly that the gallery specializing in international avant-gardes and post-war Italian art is fond of original dialogues between the artists it represents. The great portraitist of objects Giorgio Morandi (1890-1964) benefits from particular attention in this respect: placed opposite the work of Lucio Fontana (1899-1968) on the walls of the Parisian gallery from October 2025 to January 2026, the visual artist of Bolognese origin today begins a conversation with two artists whose production reflects an equal sensitivity for the genre of nature dead: Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), who formulated his first attempts at formal deconstruction in the solitude of the studio at the dawn of the 1910s, and Claudio Parmiggiani (born in 1943) for contemporary counterpoint, who has immortalized the ghosts of everyday objects since 1970. And to orchestrate this three-part concert at the Galleria di Piazza San Marco, in Venice, the Tornabuoni gallery turned to art historian Cécile Debray, specialist in modern art and president of the Picasso Museum since 2021: the Parisian institution has loaned around fifteen works by the Cubist master for the occasion.
Cezanne’s work as a legacy
Built around a narrow selection of around forty works, “Still Lifes” was designed as a “poetic and reflective journey on still life”indicates the curator, explaining the formal and spiritual relationship that Morandi, Picasso and Parmiggiani have with the pictorial genre. No more explanatory room texts and expanded labels: each of the six sections distributed between the ground floor and the first floor includes only a title and a quote from a writer or one of the three artists, echoing the theme of the chapter. The exhibition also has an interlude presenting some objects from Giorgio Morandi’s workshop.
An introductory room exhibits some emblematic pieces by the three artists and establishes the chronological milestone of the project. The oldest work in the corpus, Still life with vase and green cloth (1908) by Picasso, and the most recent, produced specifically for the exhibition by Parmiggiani in early 2026, are placed on either side of the threshold leading to the rest of the route. This sequence also allows the curator to introduce the common reference of the three artists, Paul Cézanne – his influence on the first still lifes of Picasso, who discovered him through the Stein collectors, is easily perceptible with their overall green and brown tone.
The importance of Cézanne continues to be addressed in the next room, devoted to Cubism. Then at the height of his metaphysical phase, the discovery of the master from Aix-en-Provence encouraged Giorgio Morandi to take a quick side step towards the avant-gardes: he met Balilla Pratella then Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Luigi Russolo in 1914 and exhibited with them in Rome the same year on the occasion of the first “free futurist exhibition”. The table Natura morta (1914) that Morandi exhibited on this occasion, on loan from the Center Pompidou, is placed alongside the flagship works of analytical cubism, like Guitar. I love Eva painted by Picasso in 1912. Further on, the visitor can discover the assembly Kafka’s Lampada (1985) (see ill.) by Parmiggiani, which reuses emblematic motifs and mediums of Cubism such as newspaper and glass. Visually, it works, and even very well. The lack of contextualization is, however, regrettable: all the information on Morandi’s futuristic detour and on the characteristics of Cubism are only mentioned in the exhibition catalog, even though they constitute essential keys to understanding the work.
Viewpoints
The upper sections evoke the way in which the three artists questioned the essential angles of the still life genre. The layout is very well thought out in these three thematic rooms: the vanity section in particular offers beautiful visual correspondences with a network of patterns and colors that respond to each other. On a section of wall, the basket of yellow apples from the Still life: bust, cup and palette (1932) (see ill.) by Picasso dialogues with the vial filled with yellow pigments from an untitled sculpture created by Parmiggiani in 1985. A chromatic reminder is sketched on the perpendicular wall with the presence of the spotted antique bust A Lume Spento (1985). The section also offers a nice visual journey between three works by Parmiggiani scattered in the four corners of the space and testifying to his taste for antique statuary and for the motif of the oil lamp. The section entitled “Presence of erasure” also carries out quality reconciliations. On the back wall, the rounded shape and the very worked modeling of the pitcher in the canvas Still life with apple pitcher (1919), which demonstrates the neoclassical inflection of Picasso’s work following his trip to Rome and Naples in 1917, mark an interesting contrast with the two translucent and evanescent pitchers represented on an untitled canvas painted by Parmiggiani in 2026: the two artists give a similar form to their objects but consider the question of their (in)carnation very differently. The exhibition ends with a superb dialogue between Morandi and Parmiggiani: taking up his famous process of DelocationParmiggiani offers a monumental cemetery of objects where only the negative imprints of several rows of vials remain. The canvas resonates with a small copper engraving, Still life of vases on a canvasproduced by Morandi in 1931, which also places the body absent from its objects at the heart of the composition.
