( 1884-1920 )
Amedeo Modigliani, painter and sculptor born in Livorno on July 12 1884, sun of Flaminio Modigliani and Eugenio Garsin, the family of Jewish tradition and grew up in poverty, after the firm changers of the father went bankrupt
When Amedeo had eleven years, his mother wrote in a diary that he was flawed but intelligent: "We must wait to see what is in this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist? ". The question arose from a specific family in which the attitude towards life considered not so much the money as ultimate goal, but as a means to choose the values of culture, freedom and fantasy. Born to Jewish parents traders, Modigliani grew up in an environment that offered an open and intellectual development spontaneously, without restrictive rules. The distance from the house of his father allowed him to establish with his mother a very deep bond with his grandfather and his uncle a relationship of admiration and emotional understanding. He began classical studies that he interrupted for health reasons and chose to study design. Then attended the study of the painter Micheli, a pupil of the late John Macchiaioli Factors Modigliani also had to know.
The sensitivity of enthusiastic young Modigliani reading Nietzsche, then filtered through D'Annunzio, very pleased and helped to foster even more unemotivity which then weighed on its behavior and future choices. From his mother he learned French and read the classics and poetry. In 1900 after a relapse into old lung disease took a trip with his mother in the south of visiting museums and churches. He was particularly impressed by the sculpture by Tino Camaino (1285-1337) that he saw in Naples and Florence; of him following resume in the elegant simplicity and unbroken line.
In 1902 he settled for ten months in Florence to attend school free of naked Factors that there directed. Most of the schools attended the Uffizi and Pitti Palace and especially the artistic avant-garde Italian and foreign, the English Pre-Raphaelite and Giovanni Papini, Ardengo Soffici and Umberto Boccioni that would give life to Futurism. Meanwhile, as he wrote to his Oscar Ghiglia in 1903 from Venice, where he was transferred, and mentally contemplation of us work very nature. "In the city Venetian enrolled at Royal Institute of Fine Arts. Rediscovered old knowledge as Boccioni, Soffici and Papini and worked with some portraits: The painter, Mauroner, Olper Leone, a friend of the family.
Paris
Finally he went to Paris, in early 1906 with the consent and the small sum provided by his mother and rented a studio in Montmartre, not far from Bateau Lavoir, where in those years he met Picasso, and a large number of promising young artists . Recommended by Polish sculptor Granowski which had been addressed, enrolled at Colarossi. He visited the city and art galleries that had hosted revolutionary exhibitions. Seeing the incisiveness of the stretch of Toulouse-Lautrec he begin the belief that the essence of the line was crucial. He spent months restless and disordered. At the Salon d'Automne he was able to see the exhibition of Cézanne, an artist who influenced him a lot, especially in relation to the provision of color on canvas. From 1906 to 1909, worked with unsatisfactory results also deal in sculpture and, in 1908, exhibited at the Salon des Indépendant six paintings including The Jewish (private collection, France). Paul Alexandre, a young doctor was friend and the first buyer and convinced him to attend the community of artists organized by him together with his brother Jean. The collection of this initial period up to 1914 consists of twenty-five portraits and numerous drawings.
He returned to Livorno for a few months painting, among others, The beggar Livorno (1909, collection P. Alexandre, Paris), which will then be exhibited in Paris along with the cello player and the beggar. Since a boy, Modigliani had resulted in a desire to sculpt. The meeting in Paris with Constantin Brancusi, romanian sculptor who works in its reduced form to basics, it brought back to this old aspiration. African art influenced which had already attracted other artists such as Matisse and Picasso, a patient began research work that is expressed in many designs: the Caryatids was an exercise resumed on several occasions that the staff prepared the language of his painting.
He found the same line of elongated sculpture by Tino Camaino, in a recomposition of the original ancient with the modern. He worked with the frenzy female heads of stone, each time repeating the brush. The cello player (1909, collection P. Alexandre, Paris), portrait after returning from Italy and resumed in two versions, already anticipates a psychological penetration that will be a constant of its production. Meanwhile he lived two lives in two different places: a painter and sculptor Montmartre to Montparnasse. Once again, his energy and left the friends made a collection to make it back home in 1912, complying with his desire to sculpt in marble of Carrara.
At a pace of life is more regular tried to carve the stones that friends had procured. In 1913, he settled permanently in Montparnasse abandoning the old district of Montmartre that the building was disfigure renewal. Continued operation of the design having customers who attended the coffee with rapid and essential traits. It is estimated that the drawings have been thousands, so that no one could catalog them and many went missing. The drawing took place on a characteristic of the subject, perhaps exacerbate, leading to an outcome that characterizes the work of Modigliani.
The portrait of Modigliani
In 1914, he abandoned the sculpture, and returned to devote himself to painting. Meanwhile, the war had left him alone; parties were friends, among them Alexandre, and other artists. He fell in love with Beatrice Hastings living with her a passionate relationship. Between 1914 and 1916, the ritrasse more times and in various poses: figures on a thin, long neck. Some portraits of the English poet are kept in private collections, in Bern, Los Angeles and the Guggenheim Museum in New York. He also portrayed Diego Rivera (1914, private collection, France) and Frank Burty Haviland (1914, Gianni Mattioli collection, Milan) with a technique that approached the bullet, but in Madame Pompadour (1915, Art Institute, Chicago), which portrays Beatrice Hastings with a big hat, the linearity is reached with maturity. The Italian tradition and talent in Paris had found the place of modern expression in contemplation of man as the protagonist. Painted portraits only the second ever used schemes, in which the line curve occupies several levels, creating depth. The new buyer, after his friend Alexandre who died in war, was Paul Guillaume, a shrewd merchant of art that was portrayed in 1915 with the dedication "Novo pilot" (Musées Nationaux, Paris).
Pablo Picasso painted (1915) with our eyes beyond inflexible, sitting Chaïm Soutine (1915), his friend Mouse Kisling (1915, collection Emilio Jesi, Milan), Jean Cocteau (1916). The psychological element with exceptional summary expressed the personality of the characters portraits, but little understood and appreciated the value. When Paul Guillaume, 1916, left in Sweden, he is found again only in misery. He continued to work on portraits of people with whom he had some emotional ties and female models began to prevail over those men, until in 1916 faced the first nude, nude seated (Courtland Institute, London) followed, among others, the Nudo lying , With open arms (1917, collection G. Mattioli, Milan) and the great naked (1917, Museum of Modern Art, New York). In 1916, strinse friendship with Zborowska spouses and their compatriot, Lunia Czechowka that ritrasse more pose. In April 1917, he met Jeanne Hébuterne, who became his companion and favorite model: it had the long neck, the torso frail and perfectly oval face.
Love then deepened knowledge of the subject, changing the artistic sensibilities of Modigliani ritrasse in the twenty paintings and several drawings. The girl in blue (1918, private collection, Paris), with Gypsy children (1918, National Gallery of Art, Washington), Boy with blue jacket (1918, Guggenheim Museum, New York), painted in recent years, expressing the loneliness of human condition. The Self (1918) which ended before his death represents a man who now has only the spiritual strength. The day after his death Jeanne killed herself. The daughter, was conducted in Italy and adopted by Modigliani Margaret, sister of the painter, who gave her surname that it was. The value of the work of Modigliani was gradually recognized after the death of the artist, until, after ten years, in 1930, the Biennale di Venezia, got the official consecration |
