20^th-century Italian painter Giorgio Morandi’s art is a lesson in close attention. His quiet, lyrical still lifes featuring vases, bowls, and bottles elevate these simple household items to poetic forms. When the California installation artist Robert Irwin helped mount an exhibition of Morandi’s works at the Ferus Gallery in the 1950s, he declared it a “litmus test on seeing.” Meanwhile, as a young man, the writer Umberto Eco visited a local art gallery every day for a fortnight to observe a single Morandi painting, because it appeared differently to him each time. Morandi teaches us that every surface contains a story if we look closely enough.

For its 25th-anniversary exhibition, London’s Estorick Collection presents Morandi: Masterpieces from the Magnani-Rocca Foundation, which combines the gallery’s own holdings with an inaugural British showing of the many works collected by his close friend, musicologist Luigi Magnani. Alongside the intimate clusters of domestic objects that form the nucleus of Morandi’s output, there are ethereal watercolor and pencil drawings, and captivating etchings that testify to his extraordinary skill as a printmaker.