Standing Nude; Study for Caryatid

In 1909, Modigliani returned to Paris from Italy, and moved his studio to Cité Falguière in Montparnasse. There, he was introduced to a Rumanian sculptor, Brancusi, by his friend Dr. Alexandre. Although the mainstream style at that time was expressionism, typically seen in Rodin's works, Brancusi's use of stones as a sculpture material was extremely avant-garde, and its simplified forms and repressed expression later formed the foundations of modern sculpture.
Modigliani learned his stone sculpturing techniques from Brancusi, while he was attracted to African folk art, which influenced many of that period's avant-garde artists, he also utilized vertically elongated busts and caryatids which are sculptured female statues used as colurnns in Greek temples. It seems that he had a dream of arranging these caryatids as if they were in a temple, and many of these preliminary sketches and studies remain.
He exhibited seven of his works in the "Salon d'Automne" in 1912, However, due to a shortage of materials caused by the outbreak of World War I and a lung ailment resulting from his continued inhaling of fine stone particles, he soon had to give up sculpture. Through his work in sculpture, however, he learned how to reduce objects to their essentials, which had a large effect on his later paintings.
(Source: Selected Works from the Collection of Nagoya City Art Museum, 1998, P. 19.)