Morondi No. 16 Painting

Unbeknownst to even most art historians, Giorgio Morandi, the celebrated Italian Modernist-Minimalist, had a favored cousin who would hang around the studio in Bologna, doing small errands for the star of the 20th century still life. Even Morandi himself didn’t know that after he put away his brushes and left for the evening, his cousin wasn’t just cleaning up when he stayed behind: He was doing his best to copy the works of his famous relative. Alas, the cousin, Giuseppe Morondi, was neither very talented nor classically trained. Nor very ambitious. His never-quite-finished works ultimately wound up at a Chelsea flea market, where Bryant Rousseau, spotting a kindred spirit, snapped them up and, respectfully, added a few finishing touches of his own, enough of an intervention that, in the end, he felt justified adding his own signature to the works of his self-taught soul mate. (The background story for these paintings is a work of fiction. Giuseppe Morond did not exist. These works were created solely by Bryant Rousseau.)