Amedeo Modigliani

Modigliani, Amedeo 

Born July 12, 1884, in Leghorn, Italy; died Jan. 25, 1920, in Paris. Italian painter and sculptor. Representative of the school of Paris.

Modigliani studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence. He lived in Paris from 1906. The creative work of H. de Toulouse-Lautrec, P. Cézanne, and P. Picasso, as well as African plastic arts, influenced his work. As a sculptor he developed under the influence of C. Brancuşi, gravitating toward simplified geometric forms and elongated proportions (Head, limestone, 1913; Tate Gallery, London). His style of painting, with its decorative flatness, sharp, laconic composition, musical silhouette and linear rhythms, and rich color, became defined at the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century. In his paintings, most of which are one-figure portraits and nudes, Modigliani created a special world of images—intimate and individual, but at the same time similar in their melancholy preoccupation with themselves. The paintings’ unusual psychologism, permeated with nuances, and their lucid poetic character are combined with a constant and, at times, tragic sense of man’s vulnerability (Leopold Zborowski, 1917, Museum of Art, São Paulo; Elvira, 1919, private collection, Bern; Reclining Nude, 1919, Museum of Modern Art, New York).

REFERENCES

Vilenkin, V. V. Amedeo Modiriani. Moscow, 1970.
Valsecchi, M. Amedeo Modigliani. Milan, 1955.
Sichel, P. Modigliani: A Biography of Amedeo Modigliani. New York, 1967.
I dipinti di Modigliani. Milan, 1970.

V. A. KALMYKOV