Josef Albers (1888–1976) is considered one of the most influential abstract painters of the twentieth century as well as an important designer and educator. Albers was born in Bottrop, Germany, and became a student at the Weimar Bauhaus in 1920, later joining the school’s faculty in 1922. In 1933, he and Anni Albers emigrated to North Carolina, where they founded the art department at Black Mountain College. In 1950, the Alberses moved to New Haven, Connecticut, where Josef was invited to direct the newly formed department of design at Yale University School of Art. Albers retired from teaching in 1958, just prior to the publication of his important Interaction of Color (1963).

Giorgio Morandi was born in 1890 in Bologna, Italy, where he lived until his death in 1964. From 1907 to 1913, he was enrolled at the Bologna Accademia di Belle Arti, where he later served as the professor of engraving and etching from 1930 until 1956. By 1920, Morandi established the small-scale depictions of still lifes and landscapes that he would pursue throughout his oeuvre, and that were associated with no other school or style but his own.

Laura Mattioli is the daughter of the important Italian collector Gianni Mattioli, who in 1949 acquired Pietro Feroldi’s collection that highlighted the relationship between Italian modernists and French Post-Impressionists, and which included works by Giorgio Morandi from the 1910s to the 1940s. With her father, Laura visited Morandi during her childhood and has lived with his paintings practically all her life. She holds a PhD in the history of art, and since 1984 she has managed her father’s collection, for which she has acquired additional works by Morandi. Mattioli has curated several exhibitions on the artist, including Last Morandi (1997–1998), in Verona and Venice; Giorgio Morandi: Late Paintings, 1950–1964 (2004), Lucas Schoormans Gallery, New York; and Giorgio Morandi et l’abstraction du réel (2010), Hotel des Arts, Toulon, France. In 2013, she founded the Center for Italian Modern Art, in New York, where she has presented two exhibitions on Morandi, in 2015–2016 and 2018–2019.