Amedeo Modigliani: 11 works

'A protaganist of the vibrant artistic community in Paris around 1910, the Italian Amedeo Modigliani sought to establish a new sculptural language, inspired significantly by African and ancient Greek and Egyptian examples.'

'The portrait of Antonia reveals a freely-interpreted approach to Cubist procedures, although Modigliani was never truly affiliated with the movement.'

'Modigliani and the influential Parisian art dealer Paul Guillaume became acquainted in 1914 through Max Jacob. 1914 was an important year for the artist: he had just met Beatrice Hastings, an English poet with whom who he had a stormy love affair that corresponded to a highly creative phase in Modigliani's career during which Paul Guillaume installed the painter in a Montmartre studio.'

'Scores of artists lived there, and many of them shared a Jewish heritage--including Modigliani and his friend the Lithuanian-born sculptor Jacques Lipchitz. Lipchitz commissioned Modigliani to paint this portrait on the occasion of his marriage to the Russian poet Berthe Kitrosser, as a way of helping his troubled friend financially.'

'The artist was embarking on a trip to Carrara, the finest marble quarry in Italy, where he hoped finally to realize his long-held ambition to sculpt his caryatids. Modigliani's grand ambitions were never realized, and he abandoned the project because of his fragile health after completing only one caryatid sculpture (now in the Museum of Modern Art, New York).'

'The cool palette and strong plastic modeling of the face through color modulation signal Modigliani's mastery of the lessons of Cézanne; the mood of wistful sadness, characteristic of the late portraits, shows him at the height of his powers. Povolozky came to Paris from Reims to pursue her own career as an artist, which brought her into contact with the expatriate artists of prewar Montparnasse, including Modigliani, Picasso, and Soutine.'

'Portrait of the Artist Léopold Survage dates from Amedeo Modigliani's most creative period during his stay in Nice in 1918.'

'Notorious for his fiery temper, his passionate love affairs, and his severe poverty, Amedeo Modigliani was the consummate Bohemian artist in modern Paris. This portrait depicts an acquaintance from the circle of his Polish-born dealer Leopold Zborowski.'

'When he painted this picture his characteristic style of rendering figures was fully formed.'

'Cézanne's figures, such as his portraits depicting smokers and drinkers (particularly the one entitled The Smoker, in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow) have similar goals to those of Modigliani in The Young Apprentice: same pose, same quest for meditative expression, same unification of the pictorial surface.'

'Modigliani painted numerous portraits of contemporary artists and writers, including his close friend, the French poet Max Jacob.'