Jug c. 1937

Giacinto Capelli made this jug out of watercolour on paper. The palette is restrained – earth tones, creams, blues – but so sensitive. I am drawn to the act of painting itself. How did this artwork come into being? I imagine Capelli observing, then building up the image through intuition, allowing the tones to ebb and flow to find their own form. What might he have been thinking when he made it? Was he thinking about the jug’s fullness, or its emptiness? Was he thinking about his father? His family? His childhood? I really appreciate how he’s rendered the play of light and shadow, with the brown patches bleeding out from some inner stain. There are quiet passages, like the cool gray washes near the base that make the jug feel like a ghost or a memory. Artists are always in conversation, aren’t they? Giotto and Morandi, for example, are in this painting, somehow. The result is that painting becomes a form of embodied expression, an ongoing act of inquiry. I love that.