7 Things You Might Not Know About Modigliani

Poor, misunderstood, drunk, only becoming successful after death: everyone knows the cliché of the tortured bohemian artist, and none fit the description more than Amadeo Modigliani. Known as Modì to his friends (a play on the french word maudit meaning cursed) he was good looking, intelligent, and prone to substance abuse and the financial ruin that came with it

His work is easily recognizable for his style of portraits with elongated faces, simplified features, eyes without pupils, and arched necks. He is so renowned for painting these characteristics that the medical condition pseudo-goitre, which involves a swelling of the neck resulting in a curve, is also known as Modigliani syndrome.

Despite the acclaim his paintings now receive, he lived a difficult life. He died from tuberculosis at the age of 35 in Paris, deeply impoverished and reportedly being reduced to giving away work in exchange for meals. However, as the familiar adage goes, his paintings now sell for enormous amounts of money. Around 95 years after his death, his painting Nu couché sold for around $170.4 million, one of the most expensive paintings ever sold.

Here are 7 things you might not know about the tragic life of one of the 19th century's most infamous artists:

He helped save his family from ruin – before he was born

Luckily for the family, an ancient law existed that stated that creditors were forbidden to seize the bed of a pregnant woman and the resourceful Modiglianis exploited this to rescue any belongings of worth. They piled all their prized possessions on top of Modigliani’s mother as she was giving birth so the bailiffs couldn't take them, saving the family from ruin.

His art teacher nicknamed him superman

Modigliani studied landscape, portrait, still life, and the nude, the latter at which he was most adept. Micheli nicknamed him “Superman” for his impressive talents and for the young artist’s obsession with Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which frequently mentioned the "prophecy" of the Übermensch, or superman.

He moved to Paris and had a makeover

Upon meeting Picasso, who wore workmen’s clothes, he even commented that nothing excused such an uncouth appearance, no matter the genius. However, a year after he arrived in Paris he transformed his image completely. He tried to emulate a bohemian artist, letting his clothes and studio fall into disarray and also destroyed some of his earlier works, describing them as “Childish baubles, done when I was a dirty bourgeois.”

He turned to drink and drugs to disguise how ill he was

Modigliani would have wanted to keep his condition hidden as those that suffered from tuberculosis were often pitied, or even feared, and ultimately avoided because the incurable disease spread easily.

He was also a talented sculptor

He initially carved a series of 20 heads from sandstone but unfortunately his sculpting career was short lived as the outbreak of WW2 meant that it was difficult to acquire sculptural material. His encroaching illness also meant that his physical capabilities declined. He did manage to exhibit a series of his works in the Autumn Salon in 1912 and almost a century later in 2010, one of his sculptures, Tete, a two-foot limestone sculpture of a woman’s head wearing a tribal mask, became the third most expensive sculpture ever sold.

Police closed his only ever solo exhibition on the first day

On its first day, within a few hours of the doors opening, police closed down the exhibition on the grounds that the seven nude paintings being displayed were obscene. The exhibit was only allowed to reopen once the paintings were removed from the gallery’s street front window.

His lover also met a tragic end

The couple got engaged, but unfortunately Modigliani’s health took a turn for the worse and he died in January 1920 from tubercular meningitis. Eight months pregnant and distraught with grief, Hébuterne threw herself out of a fifth-floor window the next day. The two now share a grave near Paris, his epitaph reading: “Struck down by death at the moment of glory” and hers: “Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice".