Women with swan necks. Amedeo Modigliani, biography and paintings

(1884-1920) Italian artist, graphic artist and sculptor

IN modern consciousness appearance Amedeo Modigliani was largely influenced by the brilliant game French actor Gerard Philippe in the film Montparnasse 19. He created the image of an unrecognized genius who died alone and in poverty. But this is only partly true: contemporaries recognized the talent of Amedeo Modigliani. However, at the beginning of the century there were many artists in Paris, and not all of them were able to assert themselves, become famous and rich. Nevertheless, a legend has been created, and it is very difficult to change the prevailing stereotype.

Biographical information about Amedeo Modigliani is contradictory and extremely scarce. Thus, according to one of the legends, it was assumed that the artist’s mother came from the family of B. Spinoza. In fact, the famous philosopher died without leaving any offspring.

As for the father, he was not the owner of the bank, as Modigliani’s admirers said, but was only its founder. Therefore, the fact that the poor artist in Italy had rich relatives who did not support him in time also belongs to the realm of fiction.

In fact, both Amedeo Modigliani's father and mother came from Orthodox Jewish families. His ancestors settled in Livorno, where the mother of the future artist Eugenia Garsen married Flaminio Modigliani. They had four children - Emmanuele, a future lawyer and member of parliament, Margherita, who became the adoptive mother of an artist's daughter, Umberto, who became an engineer, and, finally, Amedeo. By the time of his birth, the family was on the verge of ruin, and only with the help of Modigliani’s friends were they able to somehow get back on their feet. Amedeo Garcin, Eugenia's older brother, helped more than others. He continued to help the future artist, who was named after his uncle.

Amedeo Modigliani studied quite well, but school did not interest him at all. In 1898 he transferred serious illness- typhus Apparently, it was at this time that Modigliani realized that he could paint. Soon he was so captivated by drawing that he began to ask his mother to find him a teacher. At the age of twelve, Amedeo began studying in a studio run by Guglielmo Micheli, a proponent of post-impressionism. However, Amedeo Modigliani's development took place under the influence of many artists. His passion influenced his work domestic artists, primarily by representatives of the Sienese and Florentine schools - Sandro Botticelli and Filippo Liss.

At the end of 1900, Amedeo Modigliani fell ill again - typhus caused complications in his lungs. On the advice of doctors, he went south and lived in Naples for two years. There he first began to paint sculpture and architecture. In the studies of sculptures of Neapolitan cathedrals, the ovals of his future paintings are already visible.

In 1902, Amedeo Modigliani returned to Livorno, but soon left his homeland again. For several months he attended the Free School of Nude in Florence. This educational institution was a branch of the Institute fine arts in Venice. There the famous graphic artist Fattori became his teacher. From him Modigliani adopted an enduring love for line, simplicity of form while constantly maintaining volume. Modigliani loved to paint nudes, admiring the fragility and grace female body. He basically creates intimate portraits, avoiding deliberate pretentiousness, characteristic, for example, of Picasso’s paintings. He also devoted great importance space, achieving deliberate asymmetry. At the same time, his works are distinguished by a special lyricism; when studying them, a feeling of fragility and unreliability of the outside world is born.

With the help of his uncle, banker Amedeo Garcin, Amedeo Modigliani travels to Venice several times. But gradually he begins to understand that he must definitely get to Paris, which was then considered an artistic Mecca. In 1906, Modigliani finally settled in Paris.

At first he enrolled in the Colarossi Academy, but soon left it because he could not come to terms with the limits academic tradition. Amedeo Modigliani rents a studio in Montmartre, where his first Parisian works appeared. But a year later the artist moved from Montmartre. At that time, he gained an admirer - Doctor Paul Alexander. Together with his brother, the doctor ran a kind of shelter for poor artists. Modigliani settled there in the fall of 1907. It was Alexander who became the buyer of the “Jewish woman,” for which he then paid only two hundred francs.

And a little later, he convinced Amedeo Modigliani to give his works to the exhibition of the Salon of Independents. At the end of 1907, five works were exhibited there Italian master. The doctor's friends bought up these paintings. In the fall, Modigliani exhibited at the Salon again, but this time no one bought his work. Depression, complete loneliness in which the artist found himself due to his “explosive” character, and addiction to alcohol became the reason for the appearance of a kind of internal barrier that hindered him in all subsequent years.

Amedeo Modigliani constantly communicated with his contemporaries - J. Braque, M. Vlaminck, Pablo Picasso. Fate will give him only fourteen years for creativity. During this time, the young man will become interesting artist, who will create his own unique way of depicting figures and human faces, where swan necks, elongated ovals, somewhat elongated torsos, and almond-shaped eyes without pupils will dominate.

At the same time, all of Modigliani’s characters are easily recognizable, although what we have before us is precisely the author’s vision of his heroes, close at the same time to decadent stylization and African sculpture.

Amedeo Modigliani's portraits were written partly under the influence of Cezanne, whose large exhibition he saw in 1907. From his passion for Cézanne comes attempts to convey the subject through a special plastic space and a new palette of colors. But even in this case Modigliani retains his extraordinary vision of the hero, almost always depicting a seated man, as, for example, in his painting “Sitting Boy”.

Feeling sorry for the artist, some specially ordered paintings from him to support him. But mostly he painted close people - M. Jacob, L. Zborovsky, P. Picasso, D. Rivera. One series of portraits was inspired in 1914 by a meeting with the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Unfortunately, only one drawing from the entire cycle has survived, the one that Akhmatova took with her. The dominant feature of the space is the famous running line of Amedeo Modigliani.

Acquaintance with Akhmatova cannot be considered accidental. We should not forget that already in his youth Modigliani was influenced by the philosopher F. Nietzsche, as well as the poet and writer G. D. Annunzio. He knew classical Italian and new French symbolist poetry very well, read by heart F. Villon, Dante, Sh Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud At the beginning of the 20th century, a passion for the philosophy of A. Bergson came.

The versatility of his interests, passion for travel, and the desire to constantly discover new things in communication with his contemporaries determined Modigliani’s appeal to different forms art. Almost simultaneously with serious paintings His sculptures also appear.

Having chosen the path of a free artist, Modigliani leads a bohemian lifestyle. He doesn't finish art schools, but just being in them, trying hashish and turning from a shy, modest young man into a cult figure. Everyone who knew Modigliani celebrates him unusual appearance and a penchant for extraordinary actions. At the same time, his penchant for alcohol and drugs can be explained by the fact that he sought to overcome internal insecurity or simply succumbed to the influence of friends.

Amedeo Modigliani has many things in common with Matisse - the laconicism of the line, the clarity of the silhouette, the generality of the form. But Modigliani does not have Matisse’s monumentalism; his images are much more chamber, more intimate ( female portraits, nude), Modigliani's line has extraordinary beauty. The generalized drawing conveys the fragility and grace of the female body, the flexibility of the long neck, and the sharp characteristic of the male pose. You recognize an artist by a certain type of face: close-set eyes, a laconic line of a small mouth, a clear oval, but these repeated techniques of writing and drawing in no way destroy the individuality of each image.

At the end of his life path Amedeo Modigliani met the aspiring artist Jeanne Hebuterne, and they began to live together. As usual, Modigliani painted a portrait of a person who had become close to him. But, unlike his previous friends, she became a ray of happiness and light for him. However, their relationship was short-lived. In the winter of 1920, Modigliani died quietly in the hospital. After the funeral, Zhanna returned to her parents. But there she found herself in complete isolation, because the Catholic family could not come to terms with the fact that her husband was a Jew. Despite the fact that at this time Zhanna was expecting their second child, she did not want to live without her lover and jumped out of the window. She was buried a few days later.

After the death of her parents, little Jeanne was raised by Modigliani's relatives; they preserved some of his paintings and did not stop the girl from being interested in painting. When she grew up, she became her father's biographer and created a book about him.

The creative legacy of Amedeo Modigliani has spread throughout the world. True, many of the artist’s works have not survived due to the author’s nomadic lifestyle. Modigliani often paid with his paintings, gave them to friends or gave them for safekeeping. Some of them died because the First World War. Thus, for example, a folder with drawings left by the Russian writer I. Ehrenburg at the embassy of the Provisional Government in 1917 disappeared.

Amedeo Modigliani became a kind of symbol of his difficult era. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery. There is a short inscription on the grave: “Death overtook him on the threshold of glory.”

Amedeo Modigliani ( Amedeo Modigliani) - great Italian artist. Born in Livorno in 1884 - died in Milan in 1920. Belonged to the Paris School of Painting and.

He received his first painting lessons at the school of Gabriele Michele, who was a student of Giovanni Fattori. Then he attended the drawing school at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, where Fattori himself taught. His first works - Road to Salviano, Seated Boys, etc. - attracted art connoisseurs to his work. Even then it was clear that the art of this artist was unique and unlike anything else.

In 1906 Modigliani moved to Paris. Despite the fact that he did not want to live in France, here, like nowhere else, art. In addition, if I may say so, all the bohemians from painting gathered in Paris. Where, if not here, could a young and successful artist live!? In Paris, he was constantly in creative search. Here he became acquainted with the works of Toulouse-Lautrec and Picasso, who greatly influenced his worldview and approach to painting. This is very clearly visible from the works of that time: Jewish Woman, Cellist. He was also greatly influenced by his passion for African sculpture, which simultaneously combines simplicity, minimalism, cubism and grace, beauty, and deep meaning.

Amedeo Modigliani's talent was especially fully revealed in the portrait genre. He believed that man is the highest creation of nature and the human face is the most beautiful thing in the world. Surprisingly, he never made portraits to order, but only obeyed own desires. He painted portraits only of those people whom he knew well and whom he wanted to paint. Among those who were honored to be captured by the master’s hand were: Diego Rivera, Chaim Soutine, Max Jacob, Jean Cocteau and others.

Girl in blue

Yellow sweater

Woman with black ribbon

Cypress trees and houses

Red bust

Reclining nude

Young red-haired woman

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne

Portrait of Margarita

Portrait of Paul Alexandre on a green background

Mediterranean landscape

Standing Caryatid

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani is an Italian artist and sculptor, one of the most famous artists late XIX- beginning of the 20th century, bright representative expressionism.

Biography of Amadeo Modigliani

« Human face- the highest creation of nature” - these words of the artist could become an epigraph to his work.

Modigliani Amedeo (1884-1920), Italian painter, sculptor, graphic artist, draftsman; belonged to the "Paris School". Modigliani was born in Livorno on July 12, 1884. He began to study the art of painting in 1898 in the workshop of the sculptor Gabriele Micheli. Since 1902, he studied at the “Free School of Drawing from Nude” at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, mainly with the painter Giovanni Fattori, whose name is in Italian painting associated with the "Macchiaioli" movement, which is related to the French "Tachisme". In 1903, having moved to Venice, Modigliani studied at the Free School of Nude at the Venice Institute of Fine Arts. From 1906 he settled in Paris, where he took lessons at the Colarossi Academy of Painting. In 1907, Modigliani first showed his works at the Autumn Salon, and from 1908 he exhibited at the Salon of Independents. In the Rotunda café on Montparnasse Boulevard, where writers and artists gathered, Modigliani was among friends who, like him, lived with the problems of art. During these years, the artist was keenly searching for his “soul line,” as his friend, the poet Jean Cocteau, called Modigliani’s creative quest. If the first works of the Parisian period were executed in a manner close to the graphics of Toulouse-Lautrec, then already in 1907 the artist discovered the paintings of Cezanne, met Pablo Picasso and for some time was influenced by these masters.

This is evidenced by the works of 1908-1909 (“Jewish Woman”, 1908, “Celloist”, 1909, both in a private collection, Paris).

Especially important role His passion for African sculpture, its rough-simple but expressive forms and clean silhouette lines also played a role in the formation of Modigliani’s individual style.

At the same time, the art of his native Italy and, above all, Botticelli’s drawings, Trecento and masterly painting complex graphics Mannerists are the master's sources of inspiration. Modigliani's complex talent was most fully revealed in the portrait genre.

“Man is what interests me. The human face is the highest creation of nature. For me this is an inexhaustible source,” writes Modigliani. Never making portraits to order, the artist painted only people whose fates he knew well; Modigliani seemed to be recreating his own image of the model.

In the sharply expressive portraits of Diego Rivera (1914, Art Museum, Sao Paulo), Pablo Picasso (1915, private collection, Geneva), Max Jacob (1916, private collection, Paris), Jean Cocteau (private collection, New York), Chaim Soutine (1917, National Gallery Art, Washington) the artist precisely found the details, gesture, silhouette line, color dominants, the key to understanding the entire image - always a subtly captured characteristic “state of mind”.

Works of Amadeo Clemente Modigliani

Among other outstanding French masters of the early century, Modigliani seems most connected with the classical tradition.

He was not fascinated by the Cubists’ experiments with “pure” space and time; he did not, like the Fauvists, strive to embody the universal laws of life. For Modigliani, man was “a world that is sometimes worth many worlds,” and the human personality in its unique originality is the only source of images. But, unlike portrait painters of previous eras, he did not create a picturesque “mirror” of nature. It is characteristic that, always working from life, he did not so much “copy” its features as compare them with his inner vision. Using a refined stylization of the model’s appearance and abstract rhythms of lines and plastic masses, with the help of their expression, dynamic “shifts” and harmonious unity, Modigliani created his freely poetic, purely spiritual, sadness-covered images.

Most characteristic his style has a special role of line, however, in all his best works the artist sought harmony of line and color, a richness of values, united in generalized color zones.

The sculptural integrity of volumes is combined in his paintings with sculpted color, space seems pressed into the plane of the canvas, and the line not only outlines objects, but also connects spatial plans. In the general softness of Modigliani's style, in the light that fills his work, the Italian basis of his art is clearly perceptible.

Modigliani almost never painted bourgeois or wealthy clients.

His characters are ordinary people, maids, peasants, as well as the artists and poets around him. Each of the images is dictated by nature. Women are full of refined grace or folk energy, they look either arrogant or defenseless. In “Self-Portrait” the image embodies a restrained lyrical impulse, seeming to be filled with music from within. Modigliani portrays his friend and almost only “Marchand,” the poet L. Zborovsky, immersed in dreams, the expressionist artist X. Soutine as open and impulsive, and the more classical painter M. Kisling as stubborn and internally compressed. In the plastic solution of Max Jacob's portrait, sophistication is inseparable from modern syncopated rhythms... For all their uniqueness, these portraits bear the features of a single handwriting (almond-shaped or lake-like eyes, arrow-shaped noses, pursed lips, a predominance of oval and elongated shapes, etc.) and a single vision. In all of them one can feel compassion and tenderness for people, soft, contemplative and closed lyricism.

Modigliani does not seek to unravel the mystery of the identity of his heroes; on the contrary, each of his images reveals its own special mystery and beauty.

Self-portrait Portrait of the poet Zborovsky Portrait of Chaim Soutine

An equally striking page of his work is the depiction of nudes. Compared to others' nudes modern masters, in particular A. Matisse, Modigliani’s “nudes” always seem individual and portrait-like. The more contrasting is the transformation of a nature full of immediate life into images, purified of everything empirical, filled with enlightened and timeless beauty. In these images, the concrete sensual principle is preserved, but it is “sublimated”, spiritualized, translated into the language of musically fluid lines and harmonies of rich ocher tones - light golden, reddish-red, dark brown.

An almost inexhaustible part of Modigliani’s heritage is drawings (portraits or “nude”), made in pencil, ink, ink, watercolor or pastel.

Drawing was, as it were, the artist’s way of existence; it embodied Modigliani’s inherent love of line, his constant thirst for creativity and his inexhaustible interest in people; He often used pencil sketches to pay for a cup of coffee or a plate of food. Created at once, without corrections, these drawings impress with their stylistic energy, figurative completeness, and precision of form.

Interesting Facts: Sex Life and Drama

Sex life

Modigliani loved women, and they loved him. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of women have been in the bed of this elegant handsome man.

Back at school, Amedeo noticed that girls were paying attention to him. Special attention. Modigliani said that at the age of 15 he was seduced by a maid working in their house.

Although he, like many of his colleagues, was not averse to visiting brothels, the bulk of his mistresses were his models.

And during his career he changed hundreds of models. Many posed for him naked, interrupting several times during the session to make love.

Modigliani liked simple women most of all, for example, laundresses, peasant women, and waitresses.

These girls were terribly flattered by attention beautiful artist, and they obediently gave themselves to him.

Sexual partners

Despite his many sexual partners, Modigliani loved only two women in his life.

The first was Beatrice Hastings, an English aristocrat, poetess, five years old older than the artist. They met in 1914 and immediately became inseparable lovers.

They drank together, had fun and often fought. Modigliani, in a rage, could drag her by the hair along the sidewalk if he suspected her of attention to other men.

But despite all these dirty scenes, it was Beatrice who was his main source of inspiration. During the heyday of their love, Modigliani created his best works. Still this one whirlwind romance could not exist for long. In 1916, Beatrice ran away from Modigliani. Since then they have not seen each other again.

The artist grieved for his unfaithful girlfriend, but not for long.

In July 1917, Modigliani met 19-year-old Jeanne Hebuterne.

The young student came from a French Catholic family. The delicate, pale girl and the artist settled together, despite the resistance of Jeanne’s parents, who did not want a Jewish son-in-law. Jeanne not only served as a model for the artist’s works, she went through with him years of serious illness, periods of rudeness and outright rowdy.

In November 1918, Jeanne gave birth to Modigliani’s daughter, and in July 1919 he proposed marriage to her “as soon as all the papers arrive.”

Why they never got married remains a mystery, since these two were, as they say, made for each other and remained together until his death 6 months later.

When Modigliani lay dying in Paris, he invited Jeanne to join him in death, “so that I could be with my beloved model in paradise and enjoy eternal bliss with her.”

On the day of the artist’s funeral, Zhanna was on the verge of despair, but did not cry, but was only silent the whole time.

Pregnant with their second child, she threw herself from the fifth floor to her death.

A year later, at the insistence of the Modigliani family, they were united under one gravestone. The second inscription on it read:

Jeanne Hebuterne. Born in Paris in April 1898. Died in Paris on January 25, 1920. Faithful companion of Amedeo Modigliani, who did not want to survive separation from him.

Modigliani and Anna Akhmatova

A. A. Akhmatova met Amedeo Modigliani in 1910 in Paris, during her honeymoon.

Her acquaintance with A. Modigliani continued in 1911, at which time the artist created 16 drawings - portraits of A. A. Akhmatova. In her essay on Amedeo Modigliani she wrote:

In 10, I saw him extremely rarely, only a few times. Nevertheless, he wrote to me all winter. (I remember several phrases from his letters, one of them: Vous etes en moi comme une hantise / You are like an obsession in me). He didn’t tell me that he wrote poetry.

As I now understand, what struck him most about me was my ability to guess thoughts, see other people’s dreams and other little things that those who know me have long been accustomed to.

At this time, Modigliani was raving about Egypt. He took me to the Louvre to see the Egyptian section and assured me that everything else was unworthy of attention. Drew my head in decoration Egyptian queens and dancers and seemed completely captivated by the great art of Egypt. Apparently Egypt was his latest hobby. Soon he becomes so original that you don’t want to remember anything when looking at his canvases.

He didn’t draw me from life, but at his home—he gave these drawings to me. There were sixteen of them. He asked me to frame them and hang them in my room. They died in a Tsarskoye Selo house in the first years of the revolution. Only one survived, and, unfortunately, there is less foreshadowing of his future in him than in the others.”

Bibliography and filmography

Literature

• Parisot K. “Modigliani”, M., Text, 2008.
• Vilenkin V.V. “Amedeo Modigliani”, M. 1970.

Filmography

• In 1957, the Frenchman Jacques Becker directed the film "Montparnasse 19" ("The Lovers of Montparnasse") with Gérard Philippe in the title role.
• In 2004, Briton Mick Davis directed the film Modigliani. main role played by Andy Garcia.

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P. Picasso

Outstanding Italian painter and sculptor. Born July 12, 1884 in Livorno. After studying at the painting school in Livorno with G. Micheli, in 1902 Modigliani entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and a little later - the Academy in Venice.

At the beginning of 1906 he arrived in Paris, where he began searching for a modern artistic language. Experienced the influence of P. Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, P. Picasso, Fauvism and Cubism, but eventually developed his own style, which is characterized by rich and dense color.

In November 1907, Modigliani met Dr. Paul Alexandre, who rented a studio for him and became the first collector of his work. The artist became a member of the Independent group and exhibited his works in their salon in 1908 and 1910.

Meeting the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in 1909 played a fundamental role in the development sculptural creativity Modigliani. Modigliani received support from Brancusi and valuable advice. During these years, Modigliani was mainly engaged in sculpting and studying works of classical antiquity, Indian and African sculpture. In 1912 he exhibited seven sculptural works at the Autumn Salon.

With the outbreak of World War I, many of Modigliani's friends left Paris. The artist was depressed by changes in life, unemployment, and poverty. At this time he met the English poet Beatrice Hastings, with whom he lived for two years. Modigliani was friendly with such by different artists like Picasso, Chaim Soutine and Maurice Utrillo, as well as with collectors and business people– Paul Guillaume and Leopold Zborowski. The latter became the artist's patron and supported his work.

During these years, Modigliani returned to painting and created perhaps his most significant works. The abstractness inherent in his works was a consequence of the study of the art of ancient civilizations and the Italian primitive, as well as the influence of his friends the Cubists; at the same time, his works are distinguished by amazing subtlety psychological characteristics. Later, the formal side of his work becomes more and more simple and classical, reduced to a combination of graphic and color rhythms.

In 1917 Modigliani, at that time already very ill and prone to alcoholism, met Jeanne Hebuterne, who became his companion in last years life. IN next year Zborovsky organized personal exhibition artist at the Bertha Weil Gallery. She was not successful, but caused a scandal with several nude images: they were considered indecent, and at the request of the police the paintings were removed. Nevertheless, some French and foreign collectors showed interest in Modigliani's work. In 1918, the artist went to the Cote d'Azur for rest and treatment and stayed there for some time, continuing to work hard. Modigliani died shortly after returning to Paris, on January 24, 1920. The next morning, Jeanne Hebuterne committed suicide.

Modigliani's works combine purity and sophistication of style, symbolism and humanism, a pagan sense of completeness and unbridled joy of life and a pathetic experience of the torments of an always restless conscience.

The biography of Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) is similar to a novel about classical genius.

Short life like a flash. Early death. The deafening posthumous fame that overtook him literally on the day of the funeral.

The paintings that the artist left as payment for lunch in a cafe suddenly become worth tens of millions of dollars!

And also the love of my life. With a beautiful young girl who looks like Princess Rapunzel. And the tragedy is worse than the story of Romeo and Juliet.

If all this were not true, I would snort, “Oh, this doesn’t happen in life!” Too twisted. Too emotional. Too tragic."

But everything happens in life. And this is just about Modigliani.

Unique Modigliani

Modigliani is mysterious to me like no other artist. For one simple reason. How did he manage to create almost all of his works in the same style, and so unique?

He worked in Paris, communicated with Picasso,. I saw the work and... But he didn’t fall under anyone’s influence.

It feels like he was born and lived on a desert island. And he wrote all his works there. Unless I saw African masks. Maybe a couple of works by Cezanne and El Greco. Otherwise, his painting has almost no impurities.

If you look at early works any artist, you will understand that first he was looking for himself. Modigliani's contemporaries often started with . Like or . And even .

Left: Edvard Munch “Rue Lafayette”, 1901. National Gallery Oslo, Norway. Right: Pablo Picasso “Bullfight”, 1901 Private collection. Bottom: Kazimir Malevich “Spring, apple tree in bloom”, 1904 Tretyakov Gallery.

Sculpture and El Greco

In Modigliani you will not find this period of self-searching. True, his painting changed a little after he was engaged in sculpture for 5 years.

Here are two works created before and after the sculptural period.

It’s immediately noticeable how much Modigliani’s sculpturalism transfers into painting. His famous elongation also appears. And a long neck. And deliberately sketchy.

He really wanted to continue sculpting. But since childhood he had diseased lungs, tuberculosis returned over and over again. And stone and marble chips aggravated his illness.

Therefore, after 5 years he returned to painting.

I’ll also risk looking for similarities between Modigliani’s works and El Greco’s works. And it’s not just about the elongation of faces and figures.

For El Greco, the body is a thin shell through which the human soul shines through.

Amedeo followed the same path. After all, the people in his portraits bear little resemblance to how they really looked. Rather, it conveys character, soul. By adding what a person did not see in the mirror. For example, asymmetry of the face and body.

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This can also be seen in Cezanne. He also often made the eyes of his heroes different. Look at the portrait of his wife. It’s as if we read in her eyes, “What did you come up with again? You’re making me sit here like a tree stump..."

Portraits of Modigliani

Modigliani painted people. I completely ignored still lifes. His landscapes are also extremely rare.

He has many portraits of his friends and acquaintances from his circle. They all lived, worked and played in the Montparnasse district of Paris. Here poor artists rented the cheapest housing and went to nearest cafes. Alcohol, hashish, partying until the morning.

Amedeo especially took care of the unsociable and sensitive Chaim Soutine. A sloppy, withdrawn and very original artist: his whole essence is before us.

Mismatched eyes, crooked nose, different shoulders. And also the color scheme: brown-gray-blue. Table with very long legs. And a tiny glass.

In all this one can read loneliness, inability to cope with life. Well, truthfully, without flattery.

Amedeo wrote not only to friends, but also to unfamiliar people.

There is no such thing as one emotion prevailing in him. Like, make fun of everyone. Be touched by everyone.

He is clearly being ironic about this couple. An elderly gentleman marries a young girl of humble origin. For her, this marriage is an opportunity to solve her financial problems.

The fox-like cut of her cunning eyes and slightly vulgar earrings help to read her nature. What about the groom, don’t you know?

Here his collar is raised on one side and lowered on the other. He doesn’t want to think sensibly next to his bride, who is bursting with youth.

But the artist endlessly pities this girl. The combination of her open gaze, folded arms and slightly clubbed legs tell us of extreme naivety and defenselessness.

Well, how can you not feel sorry for such a child!

As you can see, each portrait is the whole world person. Reading their characters, we can even guess their fate. For example, the fate of Chaim Soutine.

Alas, although he will wait for recognition, he will be already very ill. His inability to take care of himself will lead him to stomach ulcers and extreme exhaustion.

And his experiences of being persecuted by the Nazis during the war would lead him to his grave.

But Amedeo will not know about this; he will die 20 years before his friend.

Modigliani's women

Modigliani was a very attractive man. Italian Jewish origin was charming and sociable. The women, of course, couldn't resist.

He had a lot of them. Among other things, he is credited with short novel with Anna Akhmatova.

She denied it until the end of her life. Many of Amedeo's drawings of her that were given to her simply disappeared. Because they were in nude style?

But some still survived. And based on them, we assume that these people had intimacy.

But main woman in Modigliani's life there was Jeanne Hebuterne. She was madly in love with him. He also felt for her tender feelings. So tender that he was ready to get married.

He also painted several dozen portraits of her. And among them there is not a single Nu.

I call her Princess Rapunzel because she had very long and Thick hair. And as is usually the case with Modigliani, her portraits do not look very much like the real her. But her character is readable. Calm, reasonable, endlessly loving.

Left: Photo by Jeanne Hebuterne. Right: Portrait of a Girl (Jeanne Hebuterne) by Modigliani, 1917.

Amedeo, although he was the life of the party, behaved somewhat differently with close people. Booze and hashish are half the battle. He could have flared up while drunk.

Zhanna easily dealt with this, calming her angry lover with her words and gestures.

This is her last portrait. She is pregnant with her second child. Which, alas, was not destined to be born.

Returning from a cafe, drunk with friends, Modigliani unbuttoned his coat. And I caught a cold. His lungs, weakened by tuberculosis, could not stand it - he died the next day from meningitis.

And Zhanna was too young and in love. She didn't give herself time to recover from the loss. Unable to bear the eternal separation from Modigliani, she jumped out the window. Being nine months pregnant.

Their first daughter was taken in by Modigliani's sister. Growing up, she became her father's biographer.

Nude Modigliani

Most of the Nu Modigliani created in the period 1917-1918. It was an order from an art dealer. Such works sold well, especially after the artist’s death.

So most of them are still in private collections. We managed to find one in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York).

See how the model's body is cut off by the edges of the painting at the elbows and knees. So the artist brings her very close to the viewer. She enters his personal space. Yes, it’s not surprising that such works sold well.

In 1917, an art dealer organized an exhibition of such nudes. But an hour later it was closed. Considering Modigliani's work indecent.

What? And this was in 1918? When did everyone write nudes?

Yes, we wrote a lot. But ideal and abstract women. And this means the presence of one important detail– smooth armpits without hair. Yes, yes, this is exactly what confused the police.

Thus, the lack of hair removal turned out to be the main sign of whether a woman is a goddess or real woman. Is it worthy of being shown to the public or out of sight.

Modigliani is unique even after death

Modigliani is the most copied artist in the world. For every original there are 3 fakes! This is a unique situation.

How did this happen?

But the latter maintained a thorough correspondence with his brother. It was from the letters that a complete catalog of Van Gogh's originals was compiled.

But Modigliani did not record his works. And he became famous on the day of his funeral. Unscrupulous art dealers took advantage of this, and an avalanche of fakes poured onto the market.

And there were several such waves, as soon as prices for Modigliani paintings jumped to Once again.

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