Nov. 18 – Giorgio Morandi in South Korea: the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Deoksugung, Seoul, and the Bologna Museums – Morandi Museum Institution set up an exhibition dedicated to the artist. The display will be inaugurated tomorrow and will remain open to the public from November 20 to February 25, 2015. For the first time, a large number of works by the Bolognese artist will be showcased in the Asian country. The display confirms the strong international interest and ongoing studies that revolve around the figure of one of the most important protagonists of the 20th century. The exhibition is part of a cultural exchange program between the cities of Bologna and Seoul, and is part of a long tradition of economic and institutional relations. The event is also an occasion to celebrate the 130th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Italy and Korea, which the Municipality of Bologna and the City of Seoul wanted to honor with a special memorandum of understanding to further strengthen trade relations and mutual cooperation. “The selection on display – said in a statement the Municipality of Bologna – is not a retrospective; it doesn’t follow a chronological order, and it doesn’t examine Morandi’s relationship and influence in European 20th century painting. Rather, the exhibition aims to calrify the importance of an extraordinarily able artist, who still speaks to the cultural needs of a globalized world, thanks to his constant quest on the value of art and on the act of painting. Morandi investigated, consistently and rigorously, how to happily translate into painting the human experience and its poetic universe, working on continuous variations of clear issues, addressing objects and familiar landscapes, to grasp the essential in painting.” (Red)
