Silvia Bächli, Before | Museo Morandi

The Morandi Museum hosts the exhibition Silvia Bächli. before, curated by Lorenzo Balbi.

Silvia Bächli is considered one of the most important international artists for her work with drawing and her refined explorations of line. She works with sheets of white paper of different sizes, qualities, and tones, using various techniques ranging from Indian ink to charcoal, from gouache to pastels.

The exhibition, designed for the spaces of the Morandi Museum, intertwines Bächli's abstract and poetic language with the legacy of Giorgio Morandi. For the occasion, the artist has selected eight still lifes from the museum's permanent collection, pairing them with a series of her new works, created specifically for this project. The comparison between the past and present highlights the affinities between the two artists, united by a search for the essential and the ability to evoke emotional depth through the simplicity of forms and gestures.

The title before refers to a temporal and procedural dimension shared by both artists. Morandi, with his raw pigments and pencil marks on the table, meticulously prepared his "actors"—bottles and everyday objects—before fixing a final composition. Similarly, Bächli dedicates a long period to the "before" of her work: she moves, observes, and recomposes her elements in space, searching for the right balance before finalizing a piece.

During a visit to Casa Morandi, Bächli discovered how rich the Bologna master's palette was, a feature she had not noticed in the works seen in museums or books. Among neutral tones, vivid details emerge, such as a brilliant green, a warm ochre, or a blue hidden in the shadows. This discovery influenced the palette of the works presented in the exhibition, where fields of vibrant colors intertwine with delicate tones, evoking the same chromatic delicacy that characterizes Morandi's still lifes.

An additional personal point of connection between Bächli and Morandi is the comparison with age: today, Bächli is the same age Morandi was in 1959 when he painted many of the still lifes displayed in this room, a parallel that emphasizes the temporal and human intensity of their artistic encounter.