Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy on July 12th, 1884 as the fourth son of Eug�nie Garsin and Flaminio Modigliani. Both the Garsins and the Modiglianis descended from the Sephardic jews that were expelled from Spain and Portugal in 1492, the survivors seeking refuge in various European countries. In the 19th century the Jewish community in Italy lived in freedom and prosperity, many of them doing business as merchants across the Mediterranean. Eug�nie Garsin (Modigliani's mother) grew up in Marseille, France and at the age of 15 is married to Flaminio, whose family is from a village near Rome, called Modigliani, but later moves to Livorno, in the Italian province Tuscany. Tuscany is famous for it's literature (Dante, Boccaccio), which may be why the mature Amedeo Modigliani would always seek the company of writers and poets. Although much of the art of Modigliani is inspired by his adult life in France, his motivation can usually be traced back to his youth in Italy. "Cara Italia" (beloved Italy) were his last words when he died in 1920.
In spite of the bad financial situation of Amedeo's father, and probably with the help of the affluent parents of Amedeo's mother, the Modigliani children get a good education, resulting in the first child Emmanuel becoming a lawyer and the third child Umberto a mining engineer. The second child, Margherita continues to live with her parents and will adopt Jeanne Modigliani, Amedeo's daughter. Amedeo is also well educated and gets familiar with poetry and literature, from Dante to Nietsche. His mother is ambivalent about his future: she suspects a career in art, but at the same time is hesitant about encouraging the "pursuit of this shadow". In 1898 Amedeo begins his drawing classes and starts to paint frantically, neglecting his school work. He gets painting lessons from painter and teacher Guglielmo Micheli (1866-1926) in Livorno. Micheli is a "macchiaiolo" of the second generation, macchiaiolo is derived from "macchia" (stain) and refers to an Italian style of painting that is related to impressionism.
During his teens Modigliani gets seriously ill several times, from pleuritis to typhus and tuberculosis. His reckless disposition begins to show when, in spite of his weak lungs, he starts to use hashish. Amedeo Modigliani "has the manners of a spoilt child", as his mother said and during his late teens he begins to develop a decadent lifestyle.
Due to his tuberculosis, Amedeo has to interrupt his lessons with Micheli in 1901 and his mother takes him on a trip through the South of Italy, visiting the museums in many different cities, where he develops an interest in sculpture. On his return to Livorno, he heads for the local marble quarry to create his first sculptures.
In 1902 Modigliani enrolls in the Florence School of Nude Studies, where his teacher is Giovanni Fatori (1828-1905). Modigliani already knew Fatori from the visits the latter had paid to the workshop of his former student Micheli, when Modigliani was present as a student. Fatori was one of the main first generation macchiaioli.
Due to his tuberculosis, Amedeo has to interrupt his lessons with Micheli in 1901 and his mother takes him on a trip through the South of Italy, visiting the museums in many different cities, where he develops an interest in sculpture. On his return to Livorno, he heads for the local marble quarry to create his first sculptures.
In 1902 Modigliani enrolls in the Florence School of Nude Studies, where his teacher is Giovanni Fatori (1828-1905). Modigliani already knew Fatori from the visits the latter had paid to the workshop of his former student Micheli, when Modigliani was present as a student. Fatori was one of the main first generation macchiaioli.
In 1903 Modigliani moves to Venice where he joins the Venice School of Nude Studies. In Venice Modigliani frequents the nightlife of "disreputable neighborhoods" and is recruited by an Italian nobleman to join occult sessions in the company of young girls and under the influence of soft drugs. In a letter to his friend Oscar Ghiglia (a fellow student at Micheli's workshop) he writes ;....The man that cannot leave behind everything that is old and rotten is not a man, but a bourgeois. You suffer, you are right, but can't suffering serve to find yourself and to make your dream stronger than your desire?......always let your aesthetic needs prevail over your social obligations.
The main influences on Modigliani would be the work of:
Toulouse-Lautrec
Toulouse-Lautrec is most famous for his drawing and the way the contours would be suggestive and completely define his subject. This approach is actually also in line with the Italian tradition and to Modigliani the work of Toulouse-Lautrec must have seemed as a contemporary confirmation of artistic principles he was already familiar with.
C�zanne
Nearly every avant garde artist in Paris would refer to C�zanne for the way he had made the first moves in the direction of abstract art by reducing forms to elementary geometric shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders etc.) and in the way he would flatten his images.
Brancusi
The sculpture of Rumanian artist Brancusi would re-ignite Modigliani's love of sculpture and would greatly influence the way he would depict the human figure.
European classical art
Italy possesses a massive collection of European art from all ages, much of which Modigliani was familiar with, in particular the Byzantine cariatides. In spite of his desire to "leave behind everything that is old and rotten", Modigliani would remain faithful to his classicist roots, resulting in a style that is a remarkable mix of abstract art and classicism.
Non-European art
Modigliani was greatly influenced by African art, to which many of his deformations of the human figure are due, most notably the elongation of faces. He was also interested in Cambodian (Khmer) sculpture.
Pablo Picasso
Modigliani had a deep respect for Picasso as an artist. He used some aspects of Picasso's cubism, and the way Picasso would depict his artistic friends during his blue period would remain one of the main themes in Modigliani's own work. When Picasso lost a close friend, he expressed his grief in a series of paintings, which besides genuine expressions of mourning, also contain an element of (post-)adolescent pathos and are in a sense a celebration of lifestyle. While artistically much more mature than Picasso's blue period, Modigliani's paintings of his art-friends lack Picasso's motivation (the suicide of his friend) and rather than a real life tragedy, they express the discontentment and boredom of a group of young bohemians. They do however, reveal Modigliani's unique artistic temperament, which we will get to later.
One of the best examples of Modigliani's style is his painting Jeanne Hébuterne wearing a straw hat. One of the key-elements of Modigliani's portraitism were the slanted heads, derived from Byzantine cariatides. However, the eyes and mouth are almost horizontal and the curvature of the nose makes it almost vertical. Regardless of these artefacts, the portrait is still as subtle and descriptive as a figurative portrait but has the directness and expression of abstract art. The portrait's subtlety is due to Modigliani's unique talent, but it's essence, the facial construction is one of the most important artistic inventions of modern art.
Picasso would go on schematize Modigliani's facial constructions, which would become the key-element of his own style and what people associate Picasso with, today. This schematized version of Modigliani's style would prove to be far more copyable and hence of far greater direct influence, but would never attain Modigliani's artistic maturity and subtlety, nor would it result in portraits that accurately resembled the subject, as Modigliani's portraits did.
Put in sportive terms: Picasso was the most successful center-forward in the history of art, scoring goals from other people's assists, especially Modigliani's. If this sound negative, bear in mind that one has to admire Picasso for his massive intelligence and his uncanning ability to analyze the work of other artists and to come to a style that summarizes modern art, providing an ideal stepping stone for his successors.
The list of influences shown above is how art history chooses to describe the background of Modigliani's work, but a spectacular omission is the work of Vincent van Gogh. No-one neither disputes the expressionist quality of Modigliani's art, nor will many disagree that Vincent van Gogh is the arch-father of expressionism. It therefore seems unlikely that Van Gogh was not a major influence on Modigliani and there is ample evidence that he was.
In Modigliani's painting Jeanne Hébuterne wearing a straw hat the influence of Van Gogh is clearly visible by the prominent monochrome background, the thick, dark contours, the course, expressive brush strokes in the straw hat and the flatness of most of the painting.
Portrait of Chaim Soutine
Toulouse-Lautrec is most famous for his drawing and the way the contours would be suggestive and completely define his subject. This approach is actually also in line with the Italian tradition and to Modigliani the work of Toulouse-Lautrec must have seemed as a contemporary confirmation of artistic principles he was already familiar with.
Nearly every avant garde artist in Paris would refer to C�zanne for the way he had made the first moves in the direction of abstract art by reducing forms to elementary geometric shapes (cubes, spheres, cylinders etc.) and in the way he would flatten his images.
The sculpture of Rumanian artist Brancusi would re-ignite Modigliani's love of sculpture and would greatly influence the way he would depict the human figure.
Portrait of Hanka Zborowska
Italy possesses a massive collection of European art from all ages, much of which Modigliani was familiar with, in particular the Byzantine cariatides. In spite of his desire to "leave behind everything that is old and rotten", Modigliani would remain faithful to his classicist roots, resulting in a style that is a remarkable mix of abstract art and classicism.
Modigliani was greatly influenced by African art, to which many of his deformations of the human figure are due, most notably the elongation of faces. He was also interested in Cambodian (Khmer) sculpture.
Modigliani had a deep respect for Picasso as an artist. He used some aspects of Picasso's cubism, and the way Picasso would depict his artistic friends during his blue period would remain one of the main themes in Modigliani's own work. When Picasso lost a close friend, he expressed his grief in a series of paintings, which besides genuine expressions of mourning, also contain an element of (post-)adolescent pathos and are in a sense a celebration of lifestyle. While artistically much more mature than Picasso's blue period, Modigliani's paintings of his art-friends lack Picasso's motivation (the suicide of his friend) and rather than a real life tragedy, they express the discontentment and boredom of a group of young bohemians. They do however, reveal Modigliani's unique artistic temperament, which we will get to later.
Jeanne Hébuterne with straw hat
More than anything, Modigliani was a portraitist and it is this author's belief that the way he drew and painted the human face motivated Picasso in such a way that he would eventually come to the "Picasso style", which would make him the most celebrated artist of the 20th century. As an artist I have found that, on trying to reduce Picasso's style to it's essence, what one comes up with is Modigliani's style, as least as far as the drawing is concerned. Picasso's style is a fascinating synthesis of many of the important styles in modern art, in which he "borrowed" from many of his contempories, and in Modigliani's case he would borrow from a man who had initially borrowed from him.
If you look at Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon then you'll see faces that are crude, and made that even the artistic avant garde would doubt his sanity. It was Modigliani who introduced subtlety to abstract portraiture and it took Picasso decades to construct his version of a mature style of abstract portraiture, which had come naturally to Modigliani.
Put in sportive terms: Picasso was the most successful center-forward in the history of art, scoring goals from other people's assists, especially Modigliani's. If this sound negative, bear in mind that one has to admire Picasso for his massive intelligence and his uncanning ability to analyze the work of other artists and to come to a style that summarizes modern art, providing an ideal stepping stone for his successors.
The maid
In Modigliani's painting Jeanne Hébuterne wearing a straw hat the influence of Van Gogh is clearly visible by the prominent monochrome background, the thick, dark contours, the course, expressive brush strokes in the straw hat and the flatness of most of the painting.
4Modigliani and the School of Paris
The art of Amedeo Modigliani cannot be classified as an -ism. One simply says that he is part of The School of Paris, which refers to a group of international artists that lived and worked in France during the pre-WWII period. Because a definition of the School of Paris is rather vague, it's difficult to give an exact number of how many artists belonged to it, some say it's around one hundred. The core of the School of Paris was formed by Jewish artists from Central and Eastern Europe who had left their native countries, sometimes due to ethnic persecution, but also because of artistic reasons: The Jewish Faith didn't tolerate figurative images, so Jewish abstract artists were forced to look for an environment that tolerated figurative art. Their relationship with France is interesting. On the one hand they admired the French culture, on the other hand the French restraint was at odds with their Jewish and Slav temperament. Although Paris is the cradle of expressionism (Van Gogh), the mentality of expressionism goes against the French sense of restraint, and there are few, if any, true French expressionists. However, the School of Paris lived and breathed expressionism, partly because of the influence of Van Gogh, as well as the German expressionists, but first and foremost because of the Jewish background of many artists of the School of Paris.According his mother, Modigliani had been a spoilt child and in Venice he got his first taste of the hedonic life style, which he would bring to perfection in Paris. Modigliani was the archetypical Latin Lover: charming, handsome and irresistible to women. This side of his personality would form a remarkable combination with his profound intellectuality, which showed in his choice of women. While Modigliani had many short lived affairs, his longer term relationships would be with women that were involved in art. Several of of his more serious affairs were with writers, such as British journalist Beatrice Hastings (1879 - 1943, their relationship lasted from 1914 to 1916).
Probably his true love was Jeanne H�buterne. They met in 1916 when H�buterne was a 19 years old art student. Their friends described her as depressed and the few photos that are left of her, suggest a depth and intensity that probably would have attracted Modigliani. All the more remarkable it is that Modigliani consistently portrayed her as a "jolie franÇaise", cheery and nonchalant, with brighter, more exuberant colors than he would normally use. Usually Modigliani was a ruthless and truthful portraitist, but Jeanne H�buterne would be idealized, making her appear more shallow than she probably was.
Artistically, 1916 is a very productive year for Modigliani. He has his first one-man exhibition at the gallery of Berthe Weill, which is ended by the police because of two of Modigliani's nude paintings in the gallery's showroom.
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