Gridiron c. 1938

Salvatore Borrazzo made this drawing of a gridiron, we don’t know exactly when or with what, but it's all about close observation. The color's kept to a minimum, all browns and grays. It makes me think about those color charts that are so popular with painters. There is a delicate rendering of the object, but it does not give up its secrets easily. The gridiron seems to float between being a humble object and a design, a kind of machine part. The lines wobble and are not precise, especially where the legs join the tabletop. Are the lines hesitant, or full of confidence? Like Giorgio Morandi, Borrazzo’s focus on the everyday transforms it into something otherworldly. Borrazzo shares with Morandi a similar eye for reductive still life drawing. It makes you think about the infinite possibilities contained within the simplest of forms.