843. Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), Italian,

Portrait of Chaim Soutine, 1916. Oil on canvas,

100 x 65 cm. Private collection. Expressionism.

 

 

Amedeo Modigliani

(1884 Livorno – 1920 Paris)

 

Amedeo Modigliani was born in Italy in 1884 and died in Paris at the age of thirty-five. From an early age he was interested in nude studies and in the classical notion of ideal beauty. In 1900-1901 he visited Naples, Capri, Amalfi, and Rome, returning by way of Florence and Venice, and studied first-hand many Renaissance masterpieces. He was impressed by trecento (thirteenth century) artists, including Simone Martini (c. 1284-1344), whose elongated and serpentine figures, rendered with a delicacy of composition and colour, and suffused with tender sadness, were a precursor to the sinuous line and luminosity evident in the work of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445-1510). Both artists clearly influenced Modigliani, who used the pose of Botticelli’s Venus in The Birth of Venus (1482) in his Standing Nude (Venus) (1917) and Red-Haired Young Woman with Chemise (1918), and a reversal of this pose in Seated Nude with Necklace (1917).

Modigliani’s debt to the art of the past was transformed by the influence of ancient art (ancient Greek Cycladic figures essentially), the art of other cultures (African for example) and Cubism. Their balanced circles and curves, despite having a voluptuousness, are carefully patterned rather than naturalistic. Their curves are precursors of the swinging lines and geometric approach that Modigliani later used in such nudes as Reclining Nude. Modigliani’s drawings of caryatids allowed him to explore the decorative potential of poses that may not have been possible to create in sculpture. For his series of nudes, Modigliani took compositions from many well-known nudes of High Art, including those by Giorgione, Titian, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, and Velázquez, but avoided their romanticisation and elaborate decorativeness. Modigliani was also familiar with the work of Francisco de Goya and Édouard Manet, who had caused controversy by painting real, individual women as nudes, breaking the artistic conventions of setting nudes in mythological, allegorical, or historical scenes.