"Accounts have long described Morandi as a provincial painter, leading a quiet and isolated life, un-involved in politics and unaffiliated with any artistic movement - a reticent man so intently focused on his still-life compositions of household objects that he earned the moniker 'the painter of bottles.' It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that established Morandi scholarship avoids complexities and ambiguities in both his life and work that could result in a much richer narrative:. ..an artist responsive to contemporary avant-garde movements, seen in his lesser-known paintings that reveal Futurist, Cubist, pittura metafisica, and Strapaese influences. Morandi's mature works are more difficult to characterize; he embraced neither abstraction nor the propagandistic realism of the 'Novecento' movement. Perhaps Morandi's relative obscurity outside of Italy comes from his distinct place outside of any twentieth-century 'ism'."