Fiori, frutta e ossi di seppia. Montale pittore e il genere della natura morta

Abstract

This essay deals with one of the lesser-known aspects of Eugenio Montale’s expressiveness, that of painting. The artistic sensitivity of the Ligurian poet and his predilection for the genre of still life, can be one of the possible interpretative keys of Montale’s poetic of objects. His paintings, far from being only the illustrations of his poems, constitute the alternative and complementary approach to the poetic word, to which Montale arrives in the historical and existential moment in which he seems to have lost his trust in civilization and lyricism. To his paintings, and specifically to the genre of still life, he will entrust the task not only of transforming sentiment into object, but above all of continuing, with different means of expression, his tireless research on reality.