Amedeo Modigliani short biography. Women with swan necks

This unrecognized genius died in terrible poverty, and now fortunes are being paid for his paintings at auctions. The name of the scandalous artist, about whom one of his colleagues said that “the original painter was a star boy, and for him reality did not exist,” is shrouded in legends. The work of a great creator who did nothing for show cannot be placed within the framework of one artistic movement.

Amedeo Modigliani: short biography

Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani was born in the city of Livorno in 1884 into a Jewish family. His father declares himself bankrupt, and the boy’s mother, who received an excellent education, becomes the head of the family in difficult times. Possessing a strong character and unbending will, the woman, who knows several languages well, earns money by translating. The youngest son Amedeo is a very beautiful and sickly child, and Eugenia Modigliani dotes on her baby.

The boy is strongly attached to his mother, who quickly recognizes his ability to draw. She sends her 14-year-old son to the school of local artist Micheli. The teenager, who by that time had received a comprehensive education, forgets about everything, all he does is draw for days, completely surrendering to his passion.

Acquaintance with masterpieces of world art

A frequently ill boy, who was also diagnosed with tuberculosis, was taken by his mother to the island of Capri in 1900 to improve his health. Amedeo Modigliani, who visited Rome, Venice, and Florence, became acquainted with the greatest masterpieces of world art and in his letters mentions that “beautiful images have haunted his imagination ever since.” Recognized Italian masters, including Botticelli, became the young painter’s teachers. Later, the artist, who dreams of devoting his life to art, will resurrect in his works the sophistication and lyricism of their images.

Two years later, the young man moved to Florence and entered a painting school, and later continued his studies in Venice, where, as researchers of the genius’s work believe, he became addicted to hashish. The young man develops an individual style of writing, which is radically different from existing artistic movements.

Bohemian life in Paris

A few years later, Amedeo Modigliani, having lost inspiration in Italy, thinks about bohemian life in France. He longs for freedom, and his mother helps her beloved son move to Paris to Montmartre and supports all his creative pursuits. Since 1906, Modi, as the artist’s new friends call him (by the way, the word maudit is translated from French as “damned”), has been enjoying the special spirit of the city. The handsome painter, who has no end to his fans, lacks money.

He wanders around the cheapest furnished rooms, drinks a lot and tries drugs. However, everyone notes that the artist, who is addicted to alcohol, has a special love for cleanliness, and washes his only shirt every day. No one could compete in terms of elegance with the irresistible Amedeo Modigliani. The artist’s photographs, which have survived to this day, perfectly convey his amazing beauty and sophistication. All the ladies go crazy at the sight of a tall painter dressed in a velor suit walking down the street with a sketchbook at the ready. And not one of them could resist the charm of the poor master.

Many people mistake him for an Italian, but Modigliani, who opposes anti-Semites, does not hide the fact that he is a Jew. An independent person who considers himself an outcast in society is not misleading anyone.

Unrecognized genius

In France, Amedeo is looking for his own style, paints pictures, and with the money raised from their sales treats new friends in bars. During the three years spent in Paris, Modigliani did not receive recognition from viewers and critics, although the artist’s friends consider him an unrecognized genius.

In 1909, Amedeo Modigliani, whose biography is filled with dramatic events, meets the very eccentric sculptor Brancusi and becomes interested in working with stone. The young man doesn’t have enough money to buy wood or sandstone for future masterpieces, so he steals the necessary material from the city metro construction site at night. He later quits sculpting due to bad lungs.

Platonic romance with Akhmatova

A new period in the master’s work begins after meeting A. Akhmatova, who came to Paris with her husband N. Gumilev. Amedeo is fascinated by the poetess, calls her the queen of Egypt and endlessly admires her talent. As Anna later admits, they were connected only by a platonic relationship, and this unusual romance fueled the energy of two creative people. Inspired by a new feeling, the ardent man paints portraits of Akhmatova, which have not survived to this day.

Most of the works sent to Russia disappeared during the revolution. Anna was left with one portrait, which she incredibly valued and considered her main wealth. Three surviving nude sketches of the poetess were recently found, although Akhmatova herself claimed that she never posed without clothes, and all Modi’s drawings are just his imagination.

New relationships

In 1914, the artist Amedeo Modigliani met the English traveler, poetess, and journalist B. Hastings, and the whole of Paris watched the stormy showdown between the two people. The emancipated muse of genius was a match for her beloved, and after fierce quarrels, insults, and scandals that shook the city, truces follow. An emotional painter is jealous of his girlfriend and beats her up, suspecting her of flirting and cheating. He pulls her hair and even throws the woman out of the window. Beatrice is trying to rid her lover of addictions, but she is not succeeding. Tired of endless quarrels, the journalist leaves Modigliani, who wrote his best works during this period, two years later. They never saw each other again.

The main love of the painter's life

In 1917, the scandalous artist met 19-year-old student Zhanna, who became his favorite model, muse and most devoted friend. The lovers move in together, despite protests from the girl’s parents, who do not want to see a Jew leading a riotous lifestyle as their son-in-law. In 1918, the couple moved to Nice, where the comfortable climate had a beneficial effect on the master’s health, undermined by alcohol and drugs, but advanced tuberculosis could no longer be treated. In the fall, the happy Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hebuterne become parents, and the loving painter invites his friend to register their marriage, but a rapidly developing illness ruins all plans.

At this time, the artist’s agent organizes exhibitions and sells paintings, and interest in the work of the brilliant creator increases along with the prices of works of art. In May 1919, young parents returned to Paris. Modi is completely weak, and seven months later he dies in a hospital for the homeless in absolute poverty. Upon learning of the death of her beloved, Zhanna, who is expecting her second child, throws herself out of the sixth floor. Life without Amedeo seems meaningless to her, and Hebuterne dreams of joining him to enjoy eternal bliss in another world. The girl carried her love until her last breath, and in the most difficult moments it was she who was the only support for her beloved rebel and was his faithful guardian angel.

The artist was accompanied on his last journey by all of Paris, and his beloved, whom the bohemian circle recognized as his wife, was modestly buried the next day. Ten years later, Jeanne's family agreed to transfer her ashes to Amedeo Modigliani's grave so that the souls of the lovers could finally find peace.

Daughter Zhanna, named after her mother, died in 1984. She devoted her life to studying the creativity of her parents.

Man is the whole world

The artist does not want to know anything except the person himself, whose personality is his only source of inspiration. He does not paint still lifes and landscapes, but turns to portraiture. Abstracted from the realities of life, the creator works day and night, for which he receives the nickname “sleepwalker.” Living in his own world, he does not notice what is happening outside the window and does not follow how time passes. Amedeo Modigliani, who admires the physical beauty, sees people completely differently from others. The master’s works confirm this: on his canvases all the characters are like ancient gods. The artist states that “a person is a whole world that is worth many worlds.”

On his canvases live not only heroes immersed in quiet sadness, but also their clearly defined characters. The artist, who often pays for food with pencil sketches, allows his models to look into the eyes of the creator, as if into a camera lens. He paints familiar people, children on the streets, models, and he is not at all interested in nature. It is in the portrait genre that the author develops an individual style of painting, his own canon of painting. And when he finds it, he doesn’t change it anymore.

Unique talent

The creator admires the naked female body and finds harmony between it and the tremulous soul of the heroines. The graceful silhouettes, according to researchers of his work, look like “fragments of a fresco, painted not from specific models, but as if synthesized from other models.” Amedeo Modigliani, first of all, sees in them his ideal of femininity, and his canvases live in space according to their own laws. Works glorifying the beauty of the human body become famous after the death of the master, and collectors from all over the world begin to hunt for his canvases, in which people have incredibly elongated heads and long, ideally shaped necks.

According to art historians, such elongated faces appeared from African sculpture.

Own vision of the heroes of the paintings

Amedeo Modigliani, whose works cannot be examined cursorily, pays close attention to characteristic faces, which at first glance resemble a flat mask. The more you look at the master’s paintings, the more clearly you understand that all his models are individual.

Many portraits of a genius creating his own world are sculptural; it is clear that the master carefully designs the silhouette. In later works, the painter adds roundness to elongated faces and tints the cheeks of the heroines with pink. This is a typical move of a real sculptor.

Unrecognized during his lifetime, Amedeo Modigliani, whose photographs of his paintings convey his unique talent, paints portraits that are not at all similar to the reflection in the mirror. They convey the inner sensations of a master who does not play with space. The author greatly stylizes nature, but he captures something elusive. A talented master does not just sketch the features of models, he compares them with his inner instinct. The painter sees images shrouded in sadness and uses sophisticated stylization. Sculptural integrity is combined with harmony of line and color, and space is pressed into the plane of the canvas.

Amedeo Modigliani: works

The paintings, created without a single correction and impressive in the precision of their forms, are dictated by nature. He sees his poet friend immersed in dreams (“Portrait of Zborovsky”), and his colleague as impulsive and open to all people (“Portrait of Soutine”).

On the canvas "Alice" we see a girl with a face reminiscent of an African mask. Modigliani, who adores elongated forms, draws an elongated silhouette, and it is clear that the heroine’s proportions are far from classical. The author conveys the inner state of the young creature, in whose eyes one can read detachment and coldness. It is clear that the master sympathizes with the serious girl beyond her years, and the audience feels the painter’s warm attitude towards her. He often paints children and teenagers, and his characters are reminiscent of the works of Dostoevsky, which Amedeo Modigliani was engrossed in.

Paintings with the titles “Nude”, “Portrait of a Girl”, “Lady with a Black Tie”, “Girl in Blue”, “Yellow Sweater”, “Little Peasant” are known not only in Italy, but also in other countries. They feel compassion for man, and each image conceals a special secret and amazing beauty. Not a single painting can be called soulless.

“Jeanne Hebuterne in a Red Shawl” is one of the author’s last works. The woman who is expecting her second child is depicted with great love. Modigliani, who idolizes his beloved, sympathizes with her desire to isolate herself from the unfriendly outside world, and the spirituality of the image in this work reaches unprecedented heights. Amedeo Modigliani, whose work is highlighted in the article, penetrates into the very essence of human experiences, and his Jeanne, seemingly defenseless and doomed, humbly accepts all the blows of fate.

The incredibly lonely genius, unfortunately, became famous only after his death, and his priceless works, which he often gave away to passers-by, gained worldwide fame.

He died in poverty so that his descendants could compete with their fortunes, trying to get paintings by the famous master into their collections. The name of Amedeo Modigliani is shrouded in legends and fraught with scandals. Noise and foam often accompany the fate of true geniuses. This is what happened with this great painter.

Genius since childhood

The famous Italian artist of Jewish origin Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno in 1884. His father declared himself bankrupt when his son was very young, and Amedeo's mother, Eugenia, took full care of the family.

"Boy in a Blue Shirt" 1919
The woman literally idolized her youngest son. He was sickly and therefore loved by his mother even more. Amedeo responded to Eugenia with reality and, as in most Jewish families, was too attached to his mother.

Eugenia Modigliani is trying to ensure that her beloved baby receives a comprehensive education. When Amedeo turned 14, she sent him to the school of the artist Micheli. The teenager literally goes crazy about painting and paints all day and night.

However, the health of young Modigliani is still weak, and in order to treat him, in 1900 Eugenia takes her son to Capri, visiting Rome, Venice, and Florence along the way. There, the young artist gets acquainted with the paintings of the greatest Italian masters and even takes several lessons from Botticelli himself.

"Pink Blouse" 1919
Two years later, Amedeo begins to study the Florentine school of painting, and then takes lessons from Venetian masters.

So, learning from great examples, Modigliani began to develop his own technique.

Bohemian Paris

Having worked in Italy for several years, at some point Amedeo realizes that he does not have enough air. We need new soil, new space in order to grow and move forward. And he moves to France.

Modigliani arrives in Paris in 1906 with no money and only painting supplies. He wanders around cheap furnished apartments, drinks a lot, goes on carouses and, as they say, even tries drugs, which does not prevent him from strictly monitoring his appearance. Modigliani was always impeccably dressed, even if this meant he had to wash his shirt every night. It’s no wonder that women are crazy about the bohemian but poor artist.

Akhmatova and Modigliani

Acquaintance with the great Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova opened a new stage in Amedeo’s work. Akhmatova came to Paris with her husband Nikolai Gumilev. But this does not stop the artist. Amedeo begins to court Anna and literally idolizes her. She calls her the Egyptian queen and draws a lot.

"The Artist's Wife" 1918
True, only one portrait of the master has survived to this day, which Akhmatova considered her main wealth. Two more pencil drawings of a nude Akhmatova were found not so long ago.

The rest of Modigliani's paintings perished or disappeared after the revolution.

Modigliani and Hastings

After breaking up with Akhmatova, Modigliani fell into depression, from which a new relationship brought him out. Journalist and literary critic, traveler and poet Beatrice Hastings met the artist in 1914.

They both turned out to be so emotional and hot that the whole of Paris watched their whirlwind romance with curiosity. Quarrels, scenes of jealousy, jumping out of windows, fights and equally violent reconciliation. This love drained both of them.

"Jeanne Hebuterne in a Red Shawl" 1917
Beatrice tried to wean Amedeo from alcohol, but she was not successful. The scandals became more and more prolonged. And in the end, the woman decides to break off the relationship.

However, this period is considered the most fruitful in terms of creativity. Critics call the paintings painted under the inspiration of the muse Beatrice the best in Modigliani’s creative heritage.

last love

An artist cannot live without love. A cold heart is incapable of creativity. And so, in 1917, he meets a student named Zhanna, whom he first makes his model, and then falls madly in love with her.

Jeanne's parents rebelled against such a relationship. A Jew leading a riotous lifestyle seems to them to be the worst match for their daughter that they can think of. However, the couple is happy. So that their happiness is not interfered with, they leave for Nice. There Zhanna finds out that she is pregnant. Modigliani invites her to legalize the relationship, but the sharply deteriorating state of health and worsening tuberculosis forces her to postpone these plans.

“Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne” 1918
The birth of a daughter, who was named after Amedeo's beloved Jeanne, makes her forget about her problems for a while. However, not for long.

In 1919, Amedeo and Jeanne and their daughter returned to Paris. The artist was very bad. Tuberculosis is progressing. Amedeo ends up in a clinic for the poor.

At this time, his agent begins to slowly sell the master's paintings. Interest in the painting of Amedeo Modigliani began to awaken. However, the artist will no longer know about this.

He died in complete poverty in a homeless shelter, and his friend Zhanna, having learned about this, jumped out of the window out of grief. At this time, she was carrying her second child, Amedeo.

All of Paris took to the streets to see off the genius on his last journey. His girlfriend was modestly buried the next day, recognizing her rights as the wife of the deceased artist.

"Girl in a Black Apron" 1918
In the end, Jeanne’s parents also accepted this fate for their daughter, ten years later agreeing to rebury the girl’s ashes in Modigliani’s grave. So after death, the lovers were united with each other forever.

Well, their daughter grew up and devoted her whole life to studying the creativity of her parents.

The special world of Amedeo Modigliani

The world of Amedeo Modigliani is a man-universe. His heroes are almost gods. They are beautiful in their external, physical beauty. But this is a very unusual beauty. Sometimes it seems that the characters’ characters break out of their corporeal shell and begin to live their own separate lives, they are so vividly written.

"Oscar Meshchaninov" 1917
Modigliani paints passers-by, acquaintances, children. He is not interested in surroundings - people are important to him.

He often paid for food with these paintings. And ironically, years after their death, they were worth fortunes. During his lifetime, the genius was not understood, and Modigliani, in fact, always remained incredibly lonely, an unrecognized genius.

Unfortunately, this often happens to real creators: their fame reaches them only after death.

His personality

Amedeo was brought up in the Jewish family of businessman Flaminio Modigliani and Eugenia Garsen. The Modigliani family comes from the rural area of the same name south of Rome. Amedeo's father had once traded coal and firewood, and now owned a modest brokerage office and, in addition, was somehow connected with the exploitation of silver mines in Sardinia. Amedeo was born just when officials came to his parents’ house to take away the property that had already been described for debts. For Eugenia Garsen, this was a monstrous surprise, since according to Italian laws, the property of a woman in labor is inviolable. Just before the arrival of the judges, the household hastily piled everything that was most valuable in the house onto her bed. In general, a scene took place in the style of Italian comedies of the 50s and 60s. Although in fact there was nothing funny in the events that shook the Modigliani house just before the birth of Amedeo, and the mother saw in them a bad omen for the newborn.

In his mother's diary, two-year-old Dedo received his first description: A little spoiled, a little capricious, but good-looking, like an angel. In 1895 he suffered a serious illness. Then the following entry appeared in my mother’s diary: Dedo had very severe pleurisy, and I had not yet recovered from the terrible fear for him. The character of this child is not yet sufficiently formed for me to express a definite opinion about him. Let's see what will develop from this cocoon. Maybe an artist? F - another significant phrase from the lips of the observant and passionately loving Evgenia Garsen.

At the beginning of 1906, among the young artists, writers, and actors who lived in Montmartre as a kind of colony, a new figure appeared and immediately attracted attention. It was Amedeo Modigliani, who had just arrived from Italy and settled on the Rue Colancourt, in a small barn-workshop in the middle of a wasteland overgrown with bushes. He is 22 years old, he is dazzlingly handsome, his quiet voice seemed hot, his gait seemed flying, and his whole appearance seemed strong and harmonious.

In communicating with any person, he was aristocratically polite, simple and benevolent, and immediately endeared him to his spiritual responsiveness. Some said then that Modigliani was an aspiring sculptor, others that he was a painter. Both were true.

Bohemian life quickly attracted Modigliani. Modigliani, in the company of his artist friends (among them Picasso), became addicted to drinking, and was often seen walking the streets drunk, and sometimes naked.

He was called a homeless tramp. His restlessness was obvious. To some, it seemed to be an attribute of an unlucky lifestyle, a characteristic feature of bohemia, others saw it almost as a dictate of fate, and, it seems, everything agreed that this eternal homelessness was a blessing for Modigliani, because it unleashed his wings for creative flights.

His fights with men over ladies became part of Montmartre folklore. He used huge amounts of cocaine and smoked marijuana.

In 1917, the artist's exhibition, containing mainly nude images, was closed by the police. It so happened that this exhibition was the first and last during the artist’s lifetime.

Modigliani continued to write until tuberculous meningitis brought him to the grave. While he was alive, he was known only in the Parisian artist community, but by 1922 Modigliani had gained worldwide fame.

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 paid special attention to him. 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 the attention of the handsome 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 and poetess, five years 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 stormy romance could not last 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 about 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. He painted my head in the attire of 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 did not 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; unfortunately, it contains less anticipation of its future than the others."

The famous artist Amedeo Modigliani was born in 1884 in Livorno, in what was then called the Kingdom of Italy. His parents were Sephardic Jews and the family had four children. Amedeo or Iedidia (that was his real name) was the smallest. He was destined to become one of the most famous artists of the late century before last and the beginning of the last century, a prominent representative of the art of expressionism.

During his very short life, and he lived only 35 years, the artist managed to reach heights that were inaccessible to many other people who lived to old age. He burned very brightly, despite the lung disease that consumed him. At the age of 11, the boy suffered from pleurisy and then typhoid. This is a very serious disease, from which many did not survive. But Amedeo survived, although it cost him his health. Physical weakness did not prevent his genius from developing, although it brought a handsome young man to the grave.

Modigliani lived his childhood and youth in. In this country, the very environment and numerous monuments helped the study of ancient art. The future artist’s sphere of interests also included the art of the Renaissance, which helped him in his further development and largely influenced his perception of reality.

The time when Modigliani was forming as a person and as an artist gave the world many talented masters. During this period, the attitude towards the art of the past was revised, and new artistic movements and directions were formed. Having moved to Moscow in 1906, the future master found himself in the thick of seething events.

Like the masters of the Renaissance, Modigliani was primarily interested in people, not objects. Only a few landscapes survived in his creative heritage, while other genres of painting did not interest him at all. In addition, until 1914 he devoted himself almost entirely exclusively to sculpture. In Paris, Modigliani met and became friends with numerous bohemians, including Maurice Utrillo and Ludwig Meidner.

His works periodically contain references to the art of the Renaissance, as well as the undoubted influence of African traditions in art. Modigliani always stood aloof from all recognizable fashion trends; his work is a real phenomenon in the history of art. Unfortunately, very little documentary evidence and stories have survived about the artist’s life that can be 100% trusted. During his lifetime, the master was not understood and not appreciated at all; his paintings were not sold. But after his death in 1920 from meningitis caused by tuberculosis, the world realized that it had lost a genius. If he could see it, he would appreciate the irony of fate. The paintings, which during his lifetime did not bring him even a piece of bread, went under the hammer at the beginning of the 21st century for fabulous sums amounting to tens of millions of dollars. Truly, to become great, one must die in poverty and obscurity.

Modigliani's sculptures have much in common with African ones, but are by no means simple copies. This is a rethinking of a special ethnic style superimposed on modern realities. The faces of his statues are simple and extremely stylized, while they amazingly retain their individuality.

Modigliani's paintings are usually classified as expressionism, but nothing in his work can be interpreted unambiguously. He was one of the first to bring emotions to paintings with naked female bodies - nudes. They have both eroticism and sexual attractiveness, but not abstract, but completely real, ordinary. Modigliani’s canvases depict not ideal beauties, but living women with bodies devoid of perfection, which is why they are attractive. It was these paintings that began to be perceived as the pinnacle of the artist’s creativity, his unique achievement.

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani is an Italian artist and sculptor, one of the most famous artists of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, a prominent representative of expressionism.

Biography of Amadeo Modigliani

“The human face is 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. From 1902 he studied at the Free School of Nude Drawing at the Florence Academy of Fine Arts, mainly with the painter Giovanni Fattori, whose name in Italian painting is associated with the Macchiaioli movement, akin 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).

A particularly important role in the formation of Modigliani’s individual style was also played by his passion for African sculpture, its crudely simple but expressive forms and clean silhouette lines.

At the same time, the art of his native Italy and, above all, Botticelli’s drawings, Trecento painting and the masterfully complex graphics of the 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 sharply expressive portraits of Diego Rivera (1914, Museum of Art, 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 of Art, Washington) the artist accurately found 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.

The most characteristic feature of his style is the special role of line, however, in all his best works the artist achieved harmony of line and color, a wealth 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 the nudes of other contemporary 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 paid special attention to him. 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 the attention of the handsome 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 and poetess, five years 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.

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

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

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.

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, starring Andy Garcia.

When writing this article, materials from the following sites were used:bibliotekar.ru ,

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