A place of transformation and integration between nature and the work of man, the Tiburtine site welcomes and reflects the most intimate aspects in the works of art of the two great masters of the 20th century, ideally united by the decorated Renaissance settings that entirely cover the walls of the rooms of Villa d’Este. For both, we speak of a kind of minimal alphabet used to express reality in essential ways,

thus achieving a language that goes beyond the retinal datum.

Morandi’s themes are in fact phenomenological because of their minimal change in form: the landscape always contributes to confirming the same different present, revealing with imperceptible declinations and variables the soul and essence of an everyday life that reverberates in his studio and in his beloved Apennines. Similarly, in Twombly, we witness the decoding of reality through a photographic language made up of fast shots, which stage an intimate diary with a strong biographical characterisation. The light, the blurred shapes of the details are the compositional coordinates for a fragmentary,

transient image, fragile in its immediacy.

The exhibition, which is the result of a collaboration between the Museo Morandi | Settore Musei Civici of Bologna, the Fondazione Nicola Del Roscio of Rome, with the help of Cristian Grasu, and some private loans, therefore intends to investigate the sensitivity and ‘sentimental’ affinity that connotes the naturalistic canon of two great masters, such as Giorgio Morandi (Bologna, 1890 – 1964) and Cy Twombly (Lexington, 1928 – Rome, 2011). Paintings, watercolours and drawings by the former, as well as photographic images

and archive documents by the latter are therefore presented in dialogue.