While the Pathfoot Building is closed, the Art Collection will each week focus on some objects of interest. You can also search our entire collection online here.
Setting Sun II
Alberto Morrocco
(Oil on canvas, 1962)
Although he lived in Dundee, Alberto Morrocco‘s Italian heritage meant that Italy was the destination for many holidays and study trips. He drew prolifically on these outings, and many of his paintings evoke scenes of the heat and vitality of a southern Mediterranean summer. Morrocco was interested in exploring colour in relation to shape and form. He was influenced early in his career by Picasso and Braque, whose work he had encountered on his travels. This looser landscape perhaps retains some of this influence. The work was donated to the Art Collection as part of the Scottish Art Council Bequest in 1998.
Morrocco was especially prolific after retiring as Head of Painting at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee, in 1982, where he had worked for thirty years.
The short film above shows a small sample of the variety of his oeuvre – landscapes, figures, still lifes and interiors.
In addition to all of this work, he was also described in an obituary as ‘by far the finest portrait painter of his time in Scotland’, and this dual career led Morrocco to depict a wide variety of sitters from HM The Queen Mother to the President of Iceland, and also four Principals of the University of Stirling, which awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in 1987.
(Oil on canvas, 1968)
(Oil on canvas, 1980)
(Oil on canvas, 1994)
