The Amedeo Modigliani Biography

Amedeo Modigliani Biography

(888) 284-9671 ~ Sales@CanvasReplicas.com ~ Riverton, Utah USA

 

 

 

Amedeo Modigliani (1884 - 1920)

Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno in July 1884. Both sides of his family were Sephardic Jews. His father Flaminio was an unsuccessful entrepreneur who had a small money-changing business, and his mother, Eugenia, by far the stronger personality of the two, ran an experimental school. Amedeo, in childhood nicknamed Dedo, was their fourth and youngest child. Thanks largely to Eugenia Modigliani, the atmosphere of the household was always unconventional; in 1898 the eldest son, Emmanuele, then aged twenty-six, was sentenced to six months imprisonment as an anarchist.

In 1898 Modigliani began formal art training under Guglielmo Micheli, a pupil of Giovanni Fattori, the leader of the Macchiaioli - the Italian equivalent of the Impressionist movement. To begin with, Modigliani's literary tastes were more advanced than his artistic ones: his favourite poet was Lautréamont, author of Maldoror, who was later to have immense significance for the Surrealists. He left home and went to Florence, where in May 1902 he registered under Fattori at the Scuola Libera di Nudo (Free School of the Nude). In March 1903 he transferred himself to Venice, where he registered at a similar academy. There he met two of the artists who were to be among the leaders of Futurism Umberto Boccioni and Ardengo Soffici. More important, he had his first real introduction to the pleasures of drugs and drink.

In the winter of 1906 he decided to go to Paris, and his mother agreed to give him a small allowance. The Paris which attracted him was already fading into the past, and he seems to have been rather wary of the new generation of experimentalists which gathered round Apollinaire, though he did go to live in Montmartre, which was at that time undoubtedly the focal point of the avant-garde. Thanks to French anti-semitism (of a sort which at that time was almost unknown in his native Italy) he discovered a much stronger sense of Jewish identity, and his friends in the Paris art world were mainly Jewish. They included Soutine, Kisling, the sculptor Lipchitz and the poet Max Jacob - his one real link with the circle around Picasso. He rapidly made a reputation for his excesses (he had a habit of stripping stark naked when drunk), and his nickname changed from the childish Dedo to Modi (a pun on the French maudit, or 'accursed'). In 1909 he retired for a while to Livorno, sick and exhausted.

When he returned, now settling in Montparnasse, the new artists' quarter, he decided to change direction, and became a sculptor. The master he chose was Brancusi, and there is a definite link between his work and Brancusi's in this medium. There are also clear signs of influence from the art from Africa and Oceania which Modigliani saw in the Musée de l'Homme. Though he was closer to finding his artistic direction, he was still miserably poor - his sculpture was made mostly from stone stolen from building sites, easy to find as Paris was then in the grip of a building boom. In 1912 he once again fell ill, and was forced to go home for a rest. But it never seems to have occurred to him to remain in Italy; he returned to Paris as soon as he could.

What stopped him carving, and led to the final phase in his work, was the outbreak of the First World War. This brought the building boom to an abrupt halt; Modigliani in any case was no longer feeling strong enough for the hard physical labour of shaping blocks of stone. When he painted it had always been directly from the motif, and now he became a specialist in portraits whose delicate stylization showed the influence of his period as a sculptor, and whose elegance and wit belied his reputation for uncouth behaviour. Some of his acquaintances thought that the uncouthness was a little cultivated - Picasso said sarcastically: 'It's odd but you never see Modigliani drunk anywhere but at the corners of the boulevard Montmartre and the boulevard Raspail.'

In the early years of the war Modigliani embarked on an affair with the South African writer Beatrice Hastings. She was some five years older than he was (he was now thirty), and had had a picturesque career. One of her previous conquests had been Katherine Mansfield. She had a little money, and Modigliani was able to live in more comfortable circumstances. But the relationship was marked by heavy drinking and Modigliani and Beatrice often came to blows - on one occasion he threw her out of a window.

From a professional point of view he was doing a little better -the ambitious young dealer Paul Guillaume was starting to take an interest in his work. But, as a portrait shows very clearly, Modigliani found Guillaume's personality unsympathetic, and in 1916 he transferred his allegiance to the Polish dealer Zborowski.

Modigliani's affair with Beatrice Hastings was now over. He had been doing some drawing at the Académie Colarossi, and here, in July 1917, he met Jeanne Hébuterne, who was then aged nineteen. Soon they were living together. Their public scenes became even more famous in Montmartre than Modigliani's rows with Beatrice. One eye-witness, André Salmon, reports:

He was dragging her along by an arm, gripping her frail wrist, tugging at one or another of her long braids of hair, and only letting go of her for a moment to send her crashing against the railings of the Luxembourg. He was like a madman, crazy with savage hatred.

Yet some - though not all - of Modigliani's many portraits of Jeanne show real tenderness; others show her as impassive and curiously graceless. By early 1918 conditions in Paris had become so difficult that Zborowski decided to move his whole stable to the South of France - he now represented Soutine, Kisling and the Japanese artist Foujita, as well as Modigliani. Modigliani settled obediently in Nice, but the Mediterranean climate and landscape had no real appeal for him. He continued to paint portraits indoors, often of local shopkeepers and their children. In February 1918 Jeanne became pregnant, and soon afterwards she and Modigliani separated for a while, probably because he loathed her disapproving and overbearing mother who had also moved South. They were reunited before the baby, a daughter, was born. Modigliani got drunk on the way to register the child as his own, and she remained officially fatherless, though she was later adopted by his family in Italy. In May 1919 he returned joyfully to Paris, the only environment he really liked. Jeanne, for the moment, was left behind, pregnant for a second time.

Thanks to Zborowski's efforts, Modigliani's paintings were at last starting to fetch respectable prices. In the summer of 1919, with the help of Osbert Sitwell, Zborowski arranged a show of French art at the Mansard Gallery in London. It was a success, and it was one of Modigliani's works which fetched the highest price. The purchaser was the writer Arnold Bennett, who said that the painting reminded him of his own heroines. In June 1919 Modigliani and Jeanne were able to move into their first real home, an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière, immediately above one which had once been occupied by Gauguin. But Modigliani's health was steadily deteriorating and his alcoholic collapses were becoming more frequent. He celebrated the New Year of 1920 in fine style, but about a fortnight later was stricken with pains in his kidneys and took to his bed. After some days his neighbour downstairs, another painter called Ortiz de Zarate, called in to see if anything was the matter. He found Modigliani delirious, complaining of a violent headache. The bed was strewn with empty bottles and half-opened cans of sardines which were dripping their oil on to the coverlet. Beside him sat Jeanne, who was nearly nine months pregnant; she had not thought of sending for a doctor. Ortiz de Zarate summoned one immediately. He came, and declared the case was hopeless: Modigliani was suffering from tubercular meningitis. He died on 24 January 1920, without regaining consciousness. There was an enormous funeral, attended by the whole of Montmartre. Jeanne, who had been taken to her parents' house, threw herself out of a fifth floor window two days after Modigliani's death, killing both herself and her unborn child.

Return to the Amedeo Modigliani Gallery

Please spend some time roaming our other galleries.

Artist Galleries A - F

Artist Galleries G - P

Artist Galleries Q - Z

 


 Home     Galleries by Subject     Galleries by Artist     Contact Us     How to Order    


Testimonials     About Us     FAQ's      Our Guarantee


 

   

 

All Rights Reserved to Canvas Replicas.  2016, 2017