Amedeo Modigliani

description

An Italian painter, sculptor and graphic artist of Jewish origin, who lived and worked in France.

One of the most famous masters of the early 20th century. The paintings created during the life of the artist had no success. They became extremely popular after his early departure from life and remain so now. At the “Christie’s” auction in 2015, his “Reclining Nude”, created in 1917, was bought for almost $170.5 million. In art history, the understandable term “Modigliani style” is used.

Key ideas:

– The main motive of Modigliani, both on the picturesque canvases and in sculpture, was a human being. Only a few landscapes of the artist are known; he was not interested in still lifes and the plot genre.

– In the early portraits, working in an expressive way, Modigliani was able to skillfully reproduce the individual characteristics of the models (“Jewish Woman”) and to bring the sharpness of the social characteristics of the heroes of the paintings to grotesque (“Diego Rivera”, “Mrs. Pompadour”, “Pablo Picasso”). In the first of the works of this genre “Jewish woman”, a densely painted canvas with dark background colors contrasts sharply with the subtle outlines of a woman’s face. Blue tones dominate here, giving the composition melancholy as opposed to the emotional collision of black and white waves. Soon they are replaced by a warm palette that always includes shades of brown.

– Characteristic features of the “Modigliani’s” portrait are connected with the master’s departure from direct pictorialism and with the advent of fascinating linear styling. Figures, acquiring smoothly curved and elongated shapes, are outlined with a clear contour, while the color goes into a restrained segment including combinations of ocher, gray and black tones, only diluted with a certain amount of smears of green and blue colors.
– Almond-shaped, sometimes “alien” eyes are a kind of “business card” of portraits by Modigliani. Filled with black or blue, they make the look deep and even more elusive. Later, bringing the linear stylization to the individual recognition of the author’s brush, Modigliani represented figures in a spiral form, as if delineating intersecting parabolas and completed most often with the tilted shape of a face (“Yellow sweater”, “Jeanne Hébuterne in a shirt”, etc.). At the first presentation, scandalously famous nudes became widely popular, as they attract by quiveringly-exciting lines of tight forms and the rhythms of the bends of beautiful bodies.

– The master transferred his style to sculptural works. Heads referring either to Asian or to African art (“pillars of tenderness”), look like idols and amaze the viewer with their significance. All work of Modigliani, which is not very easy to classify, is sometimes considered somewhat separate from the main trends in the visual arts of the first two decades of the 20th century.

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1884

1898 - 1901

1901 - 1905

1906

1907 - 1908

1909 - 1914

1910 - 1911

1914 - 1916

1917

1918 - 1919

1920

The birth of the artist

The artist was born on the 12th of July in Tuscan Livorno into the family of Sephardic Jews and was the youngest of the four children of Flaminio Modigliani and Eugenia Garcen, a native of Marseille. It was a romantic, highly educated mother who had the greatest influence on the development of her son’s personality. In addition, she kept a diary, which became the most valuable document for the biographers of Amedeo. At the age of 13, the boy, who became ill with incurable typhus, miraculously survived. The mother who listened to the feverish ramblings of her son about Italian painters allowed him to leave the regular school and take painting and drawing lessons at the local Academy of Arts.

Studying

He was the youngest of the students of Guglielmo Michele at the art school of Livorno, focused on Impressionism, attended the studio of Gino Romiti, studying nude. Due to deteriorating health (he had tuberculosis), he spent about a year with his mother in Naples, Rome, in Capri.

He went to Florence

At the invitation of O. Gilya, he went to Florence, where he studied at the School of Fine Arts with Giovanni Fattori, and got acquainted with Symbolism. After that, he studied at the Istituto di Belle Arti di Venezia (Institute of Fine Arts of Venice) and kept learning works of old masters. He got acquainted with the works of French impressionists and sculptures of Rodin at the Venice Biennale in 1903 and 1905. In Venice, the aspiring artist took part in spiritualistic sessions and became addicted to hashish.

He began to live and work in Paris

He began to live and work in Paris, spending his first months in museums (he visited the halls of the Louvre many times), churches and galleries. He led bohemian life, despite health problems and poverty. He became acquainted with artists L. Meidner, M. Utrillo and poet M. Jacob, whose portraits he often painted.

Started to study at the Kolarossi Academy

Started to study at the Kolarossi Academy, exhibited his works at the Autumn Salon at the insistence of his friend and patron P. Alexander. In the Salon of the Independent of 1908, he presented 5 paintings, including “Jewish woman”. Not related to fashionable Cubism, they were ignored.

Devoted almost all his time to the creation of sculptures

Devoted almost all his time to the creation of sculptures, giving preference, as in painting, to human nature. The preserved paintings of this period are mostly landscapes. The painter became interested in African art that was popular in France at that time. The master exhibited his stone sculptures at the studio of Portuguese artist Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso (1911). At the Autumn Salon of 1912, several of the 7 exhibits were sold. He made friends with sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.

An affair and correspondence with A. Akhmatova

An affair and correspondence with A. Akhmatova, a Russian poet.

He worked on the creation of a significant number of portraits

He worked on the creation of a significant number of portraits, depicting creators (D. Rivera, P. Picasso and others), people from the world of Parisian bohemia, vivid characters from Montparnasse and Montmartre visitors and inhabitants, including common people. He became closer to Picasso, who lived nearby, Gris, Soutine, and others. Many times he painted art critic and his lover Beatrice Hastings.

The personal exposition of Amedeo

Started a relationship with 19-year-old student of the Clarossi Academy Jeanne Hebuterne, who posed for her common-law husband more than 20 times (their daughter Jeanne was born in 1918). The only personal exposition of Amedeo, which included female nudes, ordered by L. Zborowski, the patron of the artist, was organized but was not held. At the request of the police from the station, located in front of the gallery B. Weil, the exhibition was removed almost immediately after opening.

He lived in Nice and Cannes

He lived in Nice and Cannes for more than a year. He turned to the southern nature and beauty of the people of the region: created the emotional canvases “Southern Landscape” and “Little Peasant”. His last work was a portrait of Marios Varvoglis, a prominent Greek musician.

The death of the artist

On January 24, the artist, always in poor health, died of tubercular meningitis, was buried without a monument in a modest grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery (Jewish site). On January 25, Zhanna Hebuterne, who was pregnant, voluntarily passed away; the couple’s daughter was raised by the sister of Amadeo. In 1930, Jeanne was reburied in the tomb next to Modigliani.