Milton Glaser, the man who created the I Love New York campaign, is a ground-breaking graphic artist. He also happens to have studied with Giorgio Morandi early in his career, according to an interview in New York Magazine. Even Glaser measures the importance of his keepsake by its market value:
What’s hanging above your sofa?
I have three sofas in the house, and two of them are in the middle of the floor. The other sofa has two things above it: an etching by Georgio Morandi who is — if you don’t know — a great twentieth century Italian painter, perhaps the best etcher and painter in Italy of the period, and now extremely cherished there. I studied with him for a couple years in Bologna when I had a Fulbright. At his first show in New York, I bought an etching of his for $60, which is now worth about $35,000. It’s a small etching of shells, and above that is a colored engraving by Villon, who is another artist that I admire very much.
Milton Glaser’s Hands Have Literally Never Touched a Keyboard (New York)