Amedeo Modigliani

Italian painter and sculptor

• Born: July 12, 1884
• Birthplace: Livorno, Italy
• Died: January 24, 1920
• Place of death: Paris, France

Modigliani was known for his unique style, deep psychological portraits, and sensuous nudes. Although he had difficulty selling his art, after his death his works became increasingly valued by collectors. By 2007, several of his paintings had sold at auction for more than $30 million a piece.

Early Life

Amedeo Modigliani (ah-meh-DAY-oh moh-deel-YAH-nee) was born into a distinguished Sephardic Jewish family. He was the fourth child of Eugenia Garsin and merchant Flaminio Modigliani. When the family became bankrupt, the mother established a private school to teach English and French at home to help support the family.

Modigliani started drawing and painting as a young child. His maternal grandfather, Isaac Garsin, frequently took him to museums, and from 1898 to 1900, he studied drawing formally in Livorno with the painter Guglielmo Micheli.

Modigliani’s art studies often were hampered by poor health. During his youth, he suffered three serious illnesses. In 1895 he had an attack of pleurisy, and in 1898 he contracted typhoid fever. In 1900 he again had pleurisy and also was diagnosed later that year with tuberculosis. To help him recuperate, his mother took him on a tour of Italy to see important works of art in Naples, Capri, Amalfi, Florence, and Venice. In May, 1901, he enrolled in life studies at Scuola Libera di Nudo dell’Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence, and during the summer of 1902 he experimented with stone carvings near Carrara.

From 1903 to 1905 he continued his studies in Venice. He enrolled at the Scuola Libera di Nudo in that city but did not attend many classes. He preferred to draw on his own and to study the great paintings of the Italian Renaissance. He admired especially the paintings of Vittore Carpaccio, the Bellinis, Sandro Botticelli, and the Mannerists. During this period he also met other young intellectuals eager to move to Paris, and artist friends introduced him to the drug hashish.

Life’s Work

Modigliani moved to Paris in January, 1906, and settled into the bohemian, avant-garde artists’ community in Montmartre. He enrolled at the Académie Colarossi, an independent art school, and frequently visited Picasso’s studio at Bateau-Lavoir. Modigliani also became a close friend of poet Max Jacob.

In 1907, Paul Alexander became Modigliani’s first patron, a partnership that would continue for seven years. Modigliani exhibited at the Salon d’Automne, where Modigliani had seen a Cezanne retrospective that had a profound impact on his artistic development. He admired Cezanne’s rich colors and solid forms. Indeed, Cezanne’s modeling technique of juxtaposing flat color areas to create structure and volume is evident in Modigliani’s Portrait of Pedro (1909).

Modigliani met the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi in 1909, rekindling Modigliani’s interest in sculpture. Brancusi encouraged Modigliani to carve directly into stone. Between 1909 and 1914, Modigliani concentrated on sculpture and drawings. He produced twenty-three heads, a standing figure (1912), and a caryatid (1913). These works have long smooth faces, elongated noses, and small mouths. Although inspired by Brancusi as well as African art, Modigliani’s art was not mere imitation. He was developing his own unique style, with distinctive simplification of form and enclosed volumes.

However, during this period his already delicate health was deteriorating quickly, as he continued to drink alcohol and use drugs excessively. Although his family and others helped him financially, the melancholy artist lived in poverty and was often near starvation. In 1914 he returned to painting, partly because sculpture was physically too demanding. He and Chaim Soutine, an émigré artist from Belarus, became close friends, and Paul Guillaume became Modigliani’s dealer. That year Modigliani also began an often tumultuous two-year relationship with South African poet, journalist, and critic, Béatrice Hastings, who was the subject of fourteen of his paintings. In 1916, Leopold Zborowski became Modigliani’s dealer and provided him with steady funds.

Modigliani created masterpieces between 1915 and 1919. His unique artistic vision and style had matured. In spite of chronic ill health and other problems, he was prolific, painting portraits of friends, lovers, models, and strangers. Many of these works are considered some of the greatest portraits ever painted. Although highly stylized with simplified forms or elongated features, the paintings achieved a striking likeness of the individual subjects and were penetrating psychological portraits. For instance, the portrait of his struggling, often starving artist friend, Soutine (1916), captures Soutine’s personality and psychological state of despair. In 1916, he also painted other avant-garde colleagues such as Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz, Jean Cocteau, and Moise Kisling.

In 1917, Modigliani began a series of over twenty paintings of female nudes. In December the Berthe Weill Gallery gave Modigliani his first and only one-man exhibition. However, police determined that the nudes were obscene and closed the exhibition on its first day. Ironically, the scandal generated a number of sales, and ultimately this series became celebrated as perhaps the most beautiful and provocative nudes in modern art. They are noted for their idealization of feminine sexuality, warm colors, strong rhythmic lines, sensuous forms, and elegant arrangements of lines and shapes.

Modigliani met the young painter Jeanne Hébuterne. They moved to southern France, and their daughter Jeanne was born in Nice in November, 1918. Modigliani returned to Paris in May, 1919. His health was deteriorating rapidly, but he continued to paint. A self-portrait was likely his last work.

On January 24, 1920, Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis at the age of thirty-five. On January 26, Hébuterne, who was pregnant with what would have been the couple’s second child, committed suicide by jumping from a window. Soon after Modigliani’s death, his works became increasingly valuable and sought after, and the Modigliani myth began.

Significance

Modigliani has become one of the most famous and popular artists of the twentieth century. By 2007, three of his paintings sold for more than $30 million each. Jeanne Hébuterne (Devant une Porte) of 1919, sold for $31,368,000 at a Sotheby’s New York auction in November, 2004. In June, 2006, Jeanne Hébuterne (Au Chapeau) of 1919 sold for $30.3 million at Sotheby’s London. In 2006, Sotheby’s auctioned The Concierge’s Son (1918) for $31 million.

In addition to private collections, Modigliani’s works are in hundreds of museums worldwide, including the Museé National d’Art Moderne, Paris; Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, Japan; Tate Gallery, London; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia; and the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In popular culture, the art and myth of Modigliani have inspired innumerable poems, novels, art posters, biographies, note cards, audio and video products, and even jigsaw puzzles. Gérard Philipe portrayed Modigliani in the 1958 French film Les Amants de Montparnasse, and Andy Garcia starred in Modigliani, which was released in 2004.

Bibliography

Klein, Mason, ed. Modigliani: Beyond the Myth. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2004. Essays by Maurice Berger. Catalog for major exhibitions at the Jewish Museum in New York in 2004, the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2005, and the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., in 2005. Includes scholarly essays reexamining Modigliani’s art from new perspectives, such as his religious heritage and iconography and a feminist cultural view of his nudes. Illustrations, index, chronology, bibliography.

Meyers, Jeffrey. Modigliani: A Life. Orlando, Fla.: Harcourt, 2006. Detailed and well-researched biography that argues Modigliani’s art and self-destructive lifestyle were interconnected. Illustrations, bibliography, index.

Modigliani, Amedeo. Modigliani and His Models. Exhibition curated by Simonetta Fraquelli and Norman Rosenthal. London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2006. The first book to focus on Modigliani’s models, who included friends, lovers, and other artists. Superb color photographs throughout the book. Chronology, biographies of models, bibliography, index.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Modigliani: The Melancholy Angel. Edited by Doriana Comerlati. New York: Rizzoli, 2002. This 426-page book accompanied the large Modigliani retrospective exhibition at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris from October 23, 2002, through March 2, 2003. Includes rarely seen paintings, sculptures, drawings, and other works, chosen from private collections and museums throughout the world. Beautifully illustrated and well researched. Bibliography.

Wayne, Kenneth. Modigliani and the Artists of Montparnasse. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2002. A catalog of more than two hundred pages, covering exhibitions held at the Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, New York; the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Illustrations, bibliography, index.