Amedeo Modigliani is an Italian painter of Jewish origin, especially known for his long-necked figures. In this article, we have compiled the life and important works of Amedeo Modigliani.
Amedeo Modigliani was born on July 12, 1884, in Livorno, Italy. The youngest son of a Jewish family, Modigliani opened his eyes to a poor life as the fourth child of Flaminio Modigliani, a businessman who went bankrupt shortly before the painter's birth, and his wife Eugenia Garsin. Modigliani, who caught tuberculosis when he was only ten years old, would live with the disease that would last his life. His first teacher and the person who directed him to art was his mother, a cultured woman.
At the age of 14, his mother enrolled him in the art school of master painter Guglielmo Micheli in Laverne. His teacher, Micheli, was involved in a local Italian painting movement called the Macchiaioli, close to the French impressionists, focusing on color and landscape. Modigliani worked here from 1898 to 1900. The influence of Renaissance art on the one hand, and the styles of painters such as Leutrac and Giovanni Boldini, on the other, deeply affected his early works.
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (12 July 1884 – 24 January 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. He is known for portraits and nudes in a modern style characterized by a surreal elongation of faces, necks, and figures that were not received well during his lifetime, but later became much sought-after. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. In 1906, he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with such artists as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. By 1912, Modigliani was exhibiting highly stylized sculptures with Cubists of the Section d'Or group at the Salon d'Automne.
Modigliani, who moved to Florence in 1901 and then to Venice in 1903 and registered with the Istituto di Belle Arti, started drinking hash for the first time here. He will continue to increase this extreme lifestyle throughout his life. He settled in Montmartre in Paris and rented a studio. Modigliani tried to hide his poverty under the cover of bohemianism with his flashy clothes and manners. During this period, he met artists such as Picasso, Utrillo, Jean Cocteau, and Soutine.
His painting The Jewish Woman, one of his early works, was relatively slightly influenced by incipient cubism and can be mostly associated with the Blue Period of Steinlen, Lautrec, and Picasso.
Modigliani painted a portrait of Marguerite de Hasse de Villers, the Baroness lover of her close friend and doctor, Paul Alexandre. Despite depicting the woman in a white shirt, a black tie, black pants, a black hat and black gloves, a yellow jacket, and masculine clothes, she gave a very feminine appearance with her stance. The yellow of the jacket is prominently featured in the painting, with high cheekbones, a long chin, small and puckered lips compared to her face, squinted eyes, and bow-shaped eyebrows, which is quite different from the women she will portray in later years.
He began to use large amounts of alcohol, hashish, and absinthe, and to have casual relationships with women. While women found him irresistibly attractive, the artist himself admired women. It is not surprising, therefore, that female portraits and nudes are at the center of his work.
During his time in Paris, he would visit his mother many times as his lungs deteriorated and drug and alcohol addiction deteriorated his health. Modigliani, who became acquainted with African sculptures and masks through the sculptor Brancusi, whom he met in the same year, also worked in this direction until 1913.
Horizontal and plain forms with elongated proportions and oval faces are characteristic features of the sculptures of this period. What he learned from the art of African sculpture continued to influence his works throughout his life. During this period, Modigliani meets one of his loves, the poet Anna Akhmatova. With her long neck, black hair, and gray-green eyes, she would be a period model in Modigliani's paintings. Although Anna was married, they continued their relationship.
The effects of divisionism (new impressionism) can be seen in his works between 1914 and 1916. Portrait of Moise Kisling, which is one of the works of this period influenced by Cubism, is distinctive with its rigid composition.
Modigliani made portraits of people he watched on the streets of Paris from time to time. The fact that the subject is drawn in front of a stone wall shows that there is a mismatch between its real and flawless image. The volume of the face is provided by the reddened frontal flatness of the cheeks and the distinctive white, long lines. The disappearance of the borderline surrounding the left side of the face under the chin is skillfully made. On the right margin, the gap between the chin and neck is given by a small area of light and shadow difference. The effect of Cubism is seen not only in the collage but also in the reflection on both sides of the face, in the same way even though the head is slightly turned.
Reducing his paintings to a characteristic scheme did not prevent his models from reflecting their personalities, as can be seen in the portraits of Chaim Soutine and Blaise Cendrars. Modigliani said, “What I'm looking for isn't real, it's not surreal, it's just the subconscious. Only man interests me because his face is the most sublime thing in nature.
Although Modigliani is very involved with drinking, there is very little drinking scene in his paintings.
Modigliani's last love, Jeanne Hébuterne, is the woman he said "When I can see your soul, I will draw your eyes". In 1917, he met the artist Jeanne Hébuterne at the house of his poet friend Zborovski. However, Jeanne's deeply Catholic family opposes their relationship because Modigliani is Jewish, but they continue their relationship and in 1918 their only daughter, Jeanne Modigliani, was born.
When they got sick after 1920 New Year's Eve, they did not leave the house for 4 days. When a neighbor, who is a painter, gets curious and leaves, they find Modigliani lying helplessly leaning against Hébuterne, exhausted, and the doctor is called. It turns out to be advanced tuberculous meningitis. He died on January 24, 1920, at the age of 35.
Amadeo Modigliani was buried with a huge funeral attended by almost all the art circles of Paris. His wife, Jeanne Hébuterne, who was nine months pregnant, committed suicide the next day by jumping out of the 5th-floor window of her family home. They lay in separate cemeteries until the Hébuterne family, whose anger did not subside, finally allowed Jeanne's grave to be moved next to Modigliani in 1930.
Modigliani's tombstone reads "Happiness and fame were seized by death at the moment", while Hébuterne's reads "A faithful wife to extraordinary sacrifice". Their daughter is raised by Modigliani's sister. Their daughter Jeanne Modigliani, who lost her parents when she was 15 months old, wrote a book about her father in 1958 called Modigliani: Man and Myth.