Giorgio Morandi review – sublime still lives shimmer with mystery and joy

Estorick Collection, London
Humble, haunting and deeply enigmatic, these masterful works resist obvious symbolism to show us the poetry of the everyday

He could be a peasant or a manual worker, in his collarless shirt and brown waistcoat, looking at you frankly. But the brush and palette in his hands confirm Giorgio Morandi’s true profession in the deeply likable Self-Portrait he painted in 1925 when he was in his mid-30s.

It’s so approachable, yet Morandi is one of the most mysterious artists of the 20th century. His is the only human figure in the Estorick Collection’s beautifully direct encounter with his metaphysical art. Everything else is a silent reckoning with objects and places. There are poplar trees and rivers sketched in his trips to the countryside but mostly there are paintings, etchings and drawings of the bottles, pots and other domestic stuff he endlessly rearranged in his studio at the family home in Bologna, where he lived all his life with his sisters while teaching drawing in schools.