Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884
– January 24, 1920) was an Italian artist of Jewish heritage, practicing both
painting and sculpture, who pursued his career for the most part in France.
Modigliani was born in Livorno (historically referred to in English as Leghorn), in
northwestern Italy and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to
Paris in 1906. Influenced by the artists in his circle of friends and
associates, by a range of genres and art movements, and by primitive
art, Modigliani's œuvre was nonetheless unique and idiosyncratic.
He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by
poverty, overworking, and an excessive use of alcohol and narcotics, at the age
of 35.
Early life
Amedeo Modigliani was born into a Jewish family
at Livorno, in Tuscany.
Livorno was still a relatively new city, by Italian standards, in the late 19th
century. The Livorno that Modigliani knew was a bustling centre of commerce
focused upon seafaring and shipwrighting, but its cultural history lay in being
a refuge for those persecuted for their religion. His own maternal
great-great-grandfather was one Solomon Garsin, a Jew who had immigrated to
Livorno in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.
Modigliani was the fourth child of Flaminio
Modigliani and his wife, Eugenia Garsin. His father was in the money-changing
business, but when the business went bankrupt, the family lived in dire
poverty. In fact, Amedeo's birth saved the family from certain ruin, as,
according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant
woman or a mother with a newborn child. When bailiffs entered the family home,
just as Eugenia went into labour, the family protected their most valuable
assets by piling them on top of the expectant mother.
Modigliani had a particularly close relationship
with his mother, who taught her son at home until he was ten. Beset with health
problems after an attack of pleurisy when he was about eleven, a few years later he
developed a case of typhoid fever. When he was roughly sixteen he was
taken ill with pleurisy again, and it was then that he contracted the tuberculosiswhich was to eventually claim his life. Each time it was his mother Eugenia's
intensive care of him which pulled him through. After Modigliani had recovered
from the second bout of pleurisy, his mother took him on a tour of southern
Italy: Naples, Capri, Rome and Amalfi, then back
north to Florenceand Venice.
Art student years
Modigliani is known to have drawn and painted
from a very early age, and thought himself "already a painter", his
mother wrote, even before beginning formal studies. Despite her misgivings that
launching him on a course of studying art would impinge upon his other studies,
his mother indulged the young Modigliani's passion for the subject.
At the age of fourteen, while sick with the
typhoid fever, he raved in his delirium that he wanted, above all else, to see
the paintings in the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence.
As Livorno's local museum only housed a sparse few paintings by the Italian Renaissance masters, the tales he had
heard about the great works held in Florence intrigued him, and it was a source
of considerable despair to him, in his sickened state, that he might never get
the chance to view them in person. His mother promised that she would take him
to Florence herself, the moment he was recovered. Not only did she fulfil this
promise, but she also undertook to enroll him with the best painting master in
Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli.
Micheli and the Macchiaioli
Modigliani worked in Micheli's Art School from
1898 to 1900. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an
atmosphere deeply steeped in a study of the styles and themes of
nineteenth-century Italian art. In his earliest Parisian work, traces of this
influence, and that of his studies of Renaissance
art, can still be seen: artists such as Giovanni
Boldini figure just as much in this nascent work as do those of Toulouse-Lautrec.
Modigliani showed great promise while with
Micheli, and only ceased his studies when he was forced to, by the onset of
tuberculosis.
In 1901, whilst in Rome, Modigliani admired the
work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of melodramatic
Biblical studies and scenes from great literature. It is ironic that he should
be so struck by Morelli, as this painter had served as an inspiration for a
group of iconoclasts who went known by the title "the Macchiaioli"
(from macchia —"dash of colour", or, more derogatively,
"stain"), and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences
of the Macchiaioli. This minor, localized art movement was possessed of a need
to react against the bourgeois stylings of the academic genre painters. While
sympathetically connected to (and actually pre-dating) the French Impressionists, the Macchiaioli did not
make the same impact upon international art culture as did the followers of Monet, and are today
largely forgotten outside of Italy.
Modigliani's connection with the movement was
through Guglielmo Micheli, his first art teacher. Micheli was not only a
Macchiaiolo himself, but had been a pupil of the famous Giovanni
Fattori, a founder of the movement. Micheli's work, however, was so
fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Modigliani reacted
against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with
French Impressionism, characterized the movement. Micheli also tried to
encourage his pupils to paint en plein air, but Modigliani never really
got a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafés, but preferring to
paint indoors, and especially in his own studio. Even when compelled to paint
landscapes (three are known to exist), Modigliani chose a proto-Cubist palette more
akin to Cézannethan to the Macchiaioli.
While with Micheli, Modigliani not only studied
landscape, but also portraiture, still-life, and the nude. His fellow students
recall that the latter was where he displayed his greatest talent, and
apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager: when not
painting nudes, he was occupied with seducing the household maid.
Despite his rejection of the Macchiaioli
approach, Modigliani nonetheless found favour with his teacher, who referred to
him as "Superman", a pet name reflecting the fact that Modigliani was
not only quite adept at his art, but also that he regularly quoted from
Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Fattori himself
would often visit the studio, and approved of the young artist's innovations.
In 1902, Modigliani continued what was to be a
life-long infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Accademia di Belle Arti (Scuola Libera di
Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies") in Florence. A year later
while still suffering from tuberculosis, he moved to Venice, where he
registered to study at the Istituto di Belle Arti.
It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and,
rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the
city. The impact of these lifestyle choices upon his developing artistic style
is open to conjecture, although these choices do seem to be more than simple teenage
rebellion, or the cliched hedonism and bohemianismthat was almost expected of artists of the time; his pursuit of the seedier
side of life appears to have roots in his appreciation of radical philosophies,
such as those of Nietzsche.
Early literary influences
Having been exposed to erudite philosophical
literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal
grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by
the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carducci,Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed
the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and
disorder.
Letters that he wrote from his 'sabbatical' in
Capri in 1901 clearly indicate that he is being more and more influenced by the
thinking of Nietzsche. The work of Lautréamontwas equally influential at this time. This doomed poet's Les Chants de Maldoror became the
seminal work for the Parisian Surrealists of Modigliani's generation, and the book
became Modigliani's favourite to the extent that he learnt it by heart. The
poetry of Lautréamont is characterized by the juxtaposition of fantastical
elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Modigliani was so taken by
this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes.
Baudelaire and D'Annunzio similarly appealed to the young artist, with
their interest in corrupted beauty, and the expression of that insight through Symbolist imagery.
Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from
Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from the
tuberculosis. These letters are a sounding board for the developing ideas
brewing in Modigliani's mind. Ghiglia was seven years Modigliani's senior, and
it is likely that it was he who showed the young man the limits of his horizons
in Livorno. Like all precocious teenagers, Modigliani preferred the company of
older companions, and Ghiglia's role in his adolescence was to be a sympathetic
ear as he worked himself out, principally in the convoluted letters that he
regularly sent, and which survive today.
Paris
Arrival
In 1906 Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal
point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the centre of
artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who
were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino
Severini and Juan Gris.
He settled in Le
Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre,
renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt. Even though this artists' quarter
of Montmartre was characterized by generalized poverty, Modigliani himself
presented—initially, at least—as one would expect the son of a family trying to
maintain the appearances of its lost financial standing to present: his wardrobe
was dapper without ostentation, and the studio he rented was appointed in a
style appropriate to someone with a finely attuned taste in plush drapery and
Renaissance reproductions. He soon made efforts to assume the guise of the
bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large
black hat, he continued to appear as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon
harder times.
When he first arrived in Paris, he wrote home
regularly to his mother, he sketched his nudes at the Académie Colarossi, and he drank wine in
moderation. He was at that time considered by those who knew him as a bit
reserved, verging on the asocial. He is noted to have commented, upon meeting Picassowho, at the time, was wearing his trademark workmen's clothes, that even though
the man was a genius, that did not excuse his uncouth appearance.
Transformation
Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his
demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from
a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.
The poet and journalist Louis Latourette, upon
visiting the artist's previously well-appointed studio after his
transformation, discovered the place in upheaval, the Renaissance reproductions
discarded from the walls, the plush drapes in disarray. Modigliani was already
an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this.
Modigliani's behaviour at this time sheds some light upon his developing style
as an artist, in that the studio had become almost a sacrificial effigy for all
that he resented about the academic art that had marked his life and his
training up to that point.
Not only did he remove all the trappings of his
bourgeois heritage from his studio, but he also set about destroying
practically all of his own early work. He explained this extraordinary course
of actions to his astonished neighbours thus:
The motivation for this violent rejection of his
earlier self is the subject of considerable speculation. The self-destructive
tendencies may have stemmed from his tuberculosis and the knowledge (or
presumption) that the disease had essentially marked him for an early death;
within the artists' quarter, many faced the same sentence, and the typical
response was to set about enjoying life while it lasted, principally by
indulging in self-destructive actions. For Modigliani such behavior may have
been a response to a lack of recognition; he sought the company of artists such
as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking
acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues.
Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemiansurroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe
and hashish. While drunk, he would sometimes strip himself naked at social
gatherings. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous
legend almost as well-known as that of Vincent
van Gogh.
During the 1920s, in the wake of Modigliani's
career and spurred on by comments by André
Salmon crediting hashish and absinthe with the genesis of Modigliani's
style, many hopefuls tried to emulate his "success" by embarking on a
path of substance abuse and bohemian excess.
While this propaganda served as a rallying cry to
those with a romantic longing to be a tragic, doomed artist, these strategies
did not produce unique artistic insights or techniques in those who did not
already have them.
In fact, art historians suggestthat it is
entirely possible for Modigliani to have achieved even greater artistic heights
had he not been immured in, and destroyed by, his own self-indulgences. We can
only speculate what he might have accomplished had he emerged intact from his
self-destructive explorations.
Output
During his early years in Paris, Modigliani
worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a
hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost—destroyed by him
as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to
girlfriends who did not keep them.
He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907
he became fascinated with the work of Paul
Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be
adequately categorized with other artists.
He met the first serious love of his life,
Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26. They had
studios in the same building, and although 21-year-old Anna was recently
married, they began an affair Tall (Modigliani was only 5 foot5 inches) with dark hair
(like Modigliani's), pale skin and grey-green eyes, she embodied Modigliani's
aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. After a year,
however, Anna returned to her husband.
Sculpture
In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno,
sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time
renting a studioin Montparnasse.
He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was
encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious
young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brancusi.
Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were
exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, by 1914 he abandoned sculpting
and focused solely on his painting, a move precipitated by the difficulty in
acquiring sculptural materials due to the outbreak of
war, and by Modigliani's physical debilitation.
Question of influences
In Modigliani's art, there is evidence of the
influence of art from Africa and Cambodia which he may have seen in the Musée de l'Homme, but his stylizations are just as
likely to have been the result of his being surrounded by Mediæval sculpture
during his studies in Northern Italy (there is no recorded information from
Modigliani himself, as there is with Picasso and
others, to confirm the contention that he was influenced by either ethnic or
any other kind of sculpture). A possible interest in African tribal masks seems to be evident in
his portraits. In both his painting and sculpture, the sitters' faces resemble
ancient Egyptianpainting in their flat and mask-like appearance, with distinctive almond eyes,
pursed mouths, twisted noses, and elongated necks. However these same
characteristics are shared by Mediæval European sculpture and painting.
Modigliani painted a series of portraits of
contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim
Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo
Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie
"Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise
Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.
At the outset of World War I, Modigliani tried to
enlist in the armybut was refused because of his poor health.
The war years
Known as Modì, which translates as
'cursed' (maudit), by many Parisians, but as Dedo to his family and
friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention.
Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings
entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject for
several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of
much of his drunken wrath.
When the British painter Nina
Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse in 1914, on her first evening there the
smiling man at the next table in the café introduced himself as Modigliani;
painter and Jew. They became great friends.
In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art
dealer Leopold Zborovski and his wife Anna.
Jeanne Hébuterne
The following summer, the Russian sculptor Chana
Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Tsuguharu
Foujita. From a conservative bourgeoisbackground, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with
the painter, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict, and, worse
yet, a Jew. Despite her family's objections, soon they were living together,
and although Hébuterne was the current love of his life, their public scenes
became more renowned than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.
On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibitionopened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. The chief of the Paris police was
scandalized by Modigliani's nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within
a few hours after its opening.
After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became
pregnant and on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a daughter whom they named
Jeanne (1918-1984).
Nice
During a trip to Nice, conceived and organized byLeopold Zborovski, Modigliani, Foujita and other
artists tried to sell their works to rich tourists.
Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures but only for a few francs each.
Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later
became his most popular and valued works.
During his lifetime he sold a number of his
works, but never for any great amount of money. What funds he did receive soon
vanished for his habits.
In May 1919 he returned to Paris, where, with
Hébuterne and their daughter, he rented an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière.While there, both Jeanne Hébuterne and Amedeo Modigliani painted portraits of
each other, and of themselves.
Death
Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's
health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more
frequent.
In 1920, after not hearing from him for several
days, his downstairs neighbor checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed
delirious and holding onto Hébuterne who was nearly nine months pregnant. They
summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani was dying of the
then-incurable disease tubercular meningitis.
Modigliani died on January 24, 1920. There was an
enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre
and Montparnasse.
Hébuterne was taken to her parents' home, where,
inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window two days after
Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Modigliani was
interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was
not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest
beside Modigliani. A single tombstone honors them both. His epitaph reads:
"Struck down by Death at the moment of glory." Hers reads:
"Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice."
Modigliani died penniless and destitute—managing
only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for
meals in restaurants. Since his death his reputation has soared. Nine novels, a
play, a documentary and three feature films have been devoted to his life.
Legacy
Modigliani's sister in Florence adopted their
15-month old daughter, Jeanne (1918-1984). As an adult, she wrote a biography
of her father titled, Modigliani: Man and Myth.
Cinema
Two films have been made about Modigliani: Les Amants de Montparnasse in 1958,
directed by Jacques Becker, and Modigliani in 2004, directed by Mick Davis
starring Andy
Garcia as Modigliani.
Red Nude (1917) plays an important part in the
1972 film Travels with My Aunt. The slyly winking face
of Maggie
Smith, complete with bright red hair, seems to have been superimposed onto
the original painting.
Selected paintings
- Head
of a Woman with a Hat (1907)
- Portrait
of Juan Gris (1915)
- Portrait
of the Art Dealer Paul Guillaume (1916)
- Portrait
of Jean Cocteau (1916)
- Seated
Nude (ca. 1918) Honolulu Academy of Arts
- Portrait
of Jeanne Hébuterne (1918)
- Portrait
of Marios Varvoglis (1920; Modigliani's last
painting)
Selected sculptures
(Only 27 sculptures by Modigliani are known to
exist.)
- Head
of a Woman (1910/1911).
- Head (1911-1913).
- Head (1911-1912).
- Head (1912).
- Rose
Caryatid (1914).
References
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 13.
- Fifield, William (19 Jun 1978). Modigliani:
A Biography. W.H. Allen.
pp. 316.
- Diehl, Gaston (Reissue edition (Jul 1989)). Modigliani. Crown Pub. pp. 96.
- Soby, James Thrall (Sep 1977). Amedeo
Modigliani. New York: Arno P.
pp. 55.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 14.
- Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.pp. 12.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 16.
- Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 12. Mann,
Carol (1980). Modigliani.
London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 16. Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo
Modigliani. London: Thames
and Hudson.. pp. 17.
- Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 16. Mann,
Carol (1980). Modigliani.
London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 19–22. Mann, Carol (1980). Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 20.
Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 17.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 17.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 17.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 19.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 19.
- Werner, Alfred (1985). Amedeo Modigliani. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc.. pp. 24.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 20.
- Werner, Alfred (1967). Amedeo Modigliani. London: Thames and Hudson.. pp. 20.
- Klein,
Mason, et al, Modigliani: Beyond the Myth, page 197. The Jewish
Museum and Yale University Press, 2004.
- Lappin, Linda (Summer 2002). "Missing
person in Montparnasse: The case of Jeanne Hebuterne". Literary
Review: an international journal of contemporary writing45 (4): 785–811. 0024458
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