"Janet Abramowicz studied with Morandi before becoming his teaching assistant, a relationship that evolved into a lifelong friendship with the artist and his family. She takes the reader through half a century of Italian art history and its most significant movements - Futurism, Pittura Metafisica, Valori Plastici, Strapaese, Novecento - most of which have received scant attention from English-language scholars. Abramowicz shows how Morandi worked in close proximity to mainstream contemporary European art and tells the story of his relationship to the Fascist politics and patrons of his time, illustrating how his connections to this period were muted in an effort to establish the artist as apolitical after the fall of the regime in post-World War II Italy." "An important new addition to scholarship on twentieth-century Italian art history, this book features many rare and previously unpublished images and will fascinate admirers of Morandi and his transcendent work."--BOOK JACKET.