Autoritratto amedeo modigliani biography

1916

Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz

This double portrait of Jacques Lipchitz and his wife, Berthe, exemplifies Modigliani's talent for eliciting the inner life of his subjects.

He discovered a preference for art-making amid the atmosphere of the local bars and cafés, where he was introduced to illicit substances. It did me good.

Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian painter and sculptor, is celebrated for his distinctive, elongated portraits that capture the essence of the human form with a unique, stylized elegance.

As an adult, she wrote a biography of her father titled Modigliani: Man and Myth. His bold, expressive brushwork and muted color palette imbue his subjects with a sense of melancholy and introspection, reflecting the artist's own tumultuous life and his deep engagement with the human condition.

Amedeo Modigliani, born in Livorno, Italy, in 1884, was a visionary artist known for his distinctive style and elegant portrayals of the human figure.

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 Impressionism, characterized the movement. Working during that fertile period of "isms," Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, Futurism, Modigliani did not choose to be categorized within any of these prevailing, defining confines.

In July, he met the English writer and poet Emily Alice Haigh (known by her pen name Beatrice Hastings), who became his lover and the subject of several paintings. One can say he recognized the merit of Jean Cocteau's proclamation: "Ne t'attardes pas avec l'avante garde" ("Don't pay attention to the avant-garde").

Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. In 1895, Amedeo contracted the first of several serious illnesses that he battled throughout childhood. 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.

The family business was believed to be a credit agency with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis, and London.

Death

Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.

The show was closed by police on its opening day, but continued thereafter, most likely after the removal of paintings from the gallery's streetfront window. Morelli had served as an inspiration for a group of iconoclasts who were known by the title "the Macchiaioli", and Modigliani had already been exposed to the influences of the Macchiaioli.

To date, there are three movies that recount his life and times that all center on this legend, portraying him as a passionate individual with a decadent, self-destructive lifestyle. Head of a Woman Wearing a Hat (1907) makes use of a curvilinear style that is characteristic of Art Nouveau, but also exhibits the influence of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec in the tilt of the woman's shoulders and the thoughtful, expressive face, revealing Modigliani's early interest in representing psychological states.

A 1906 exhibition of three paintings at the Laura Wylda Gallery failed to generate any sales or interest in Modigliani's work.

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. While not closely associated with any one particular or formal movement, Modigliani arrived at a signature style that fused aspects of contemporary European artistic developments such as Cubism with non-Western art forms like African masks.

Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later became his most popular and valued works. 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.