Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was a Jewish Italian painter and sculptor. Modigliani was born in Livorno, Tuscany and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906 where he began to create his unique style, influenced by the artists in his circle of friends, primitive art, but standing apart from them stylistically. Sick most of his life, he partook of alcohol and drugs, and was a philanderer; he died at the age of 35.

Early life

Born into a Jewish family--both mother and father followed Sephardic Judaism--in Livorno, Tuscany, Italy, Modigliani was the fourth child of Flaminio Modigliani and his French-born wife, Eugénie Garsin. His father was in the money-changing business, but when the business went bankrupt the family lived in dire poverty. Infact Amedeo's arrival saved the family from certain ruin as according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. So when the bailiffs entered the family home, just as Eugenie went into labour - the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of the expectant mother.

Beset with health problems after a bout of typhoid at the age of 14, he contracted tuberculosis two years later. The tuberculosis affected him for the rest of his life. He, as well as other family members, experienced depression. He enjoyed a particularly close relationship with his mother, probably the only truly harmonious male-female relationship of his life. Eugenie taught her son at home until he was ten. To help him recover from tuberculosis she took him to Naples and then to Capri to study art. Aged 16 he made his first sexual conquest with a young Norwegian tourist and embarked on a path of debauchery from which he would never deviate.

In 1902, Modigliani enrolled in the Free School of Nude Studies (Scuola libera di Nudo) in Florence and a year later moved to Venice where he registered to study at the Istituto per le Belle Arti di Venezia. It is in Venice that he first smoked hashish and, rather than studying, began to spend time frequenting disreputable parts of the city. He also read and was influenced by the writings of Nietzsche and Comte de Lautreamont and believed the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.

Paris

In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, the then focal point of the avant-garde, where he became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as famous as that of Vincent van Gogh.

Settling in Le Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, he was soon busy painting, at first influenced by the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec until Paul Cézanne changed his views. Eventually, Modigliani developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with other artists.

He was noted for his fast work, usually finishing a portrait in one or two sittings and never reworked. Yet, those who posed for him said that being painted by Modigliani was like having their soul laid bare.

He also stepped-up his hedonistic inclinations here, pursuing a succession of eager shop girls and models before meeting the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova in 1910 when he was 26. They had studios in the same building and although 21 year old Anna was recently married, they began an affair. Tall (Modigliani was only 5 foot 5 inches) with dark hair (like Modigliani's), pale skin and grey-green eyes she embodied Modigliani's aesthetic ideal and the pair became engrossed in each other. However for Anna the affair was just a diversion and after realising that Modi, with his violent urges, could not provide the happiness she craved, she returned to her husband after a year. Modi swiftly degenerated into a cycle of addition and substance abuse which was to beset the remainder of his life. He degenerated to the extent he was being woken by street-cleaners and lifted from refuse bins. Despairing that his work was not being recognised and determined to be noticed himself he stripped naked in public.

His patrons encouraged this debauched behaviour as it produced spectacular artistic results. One admitted throwing him in a room with paint, models and drink and opening the door as if it were 'the cage of a wild beast'.

Experiments with sculpture

In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle. Soon he was back in Paris, this time renting a studio in Montparnasse. He originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and he began sculpting seriously after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

Although a series of Modigliani's sculptures were exhibited in the Salon d'Automne of 1912, he abruptly abandoned sculpting and focused solely on his painting.

In Modigliani's art, there is evidence the influence of primitive art from Africa and Cambodia which he may have seen in the Musée de l'Homme. His interest in African masks shows in the treatment of the sitters' faces in his portraits. The sitter's faces appear ancient, almost resembling ancient Egyptian painting in their flat and masklike appearance, with distinctive almond eyes, pursed mouths, twisted noses, and elongated necks.

Among his works is the portrait of his hard-drinking friend Chaim Soutine plus portraits of many of his other Montparnasse contemporaries such as Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie Marevna Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau.

At the outset of World War I, he tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.

The war years

Known as Modì by the art world, but as Dedo to his friends, Modigliani was a handsome man, and attracted much female attention.

Women came and went until Beatrice Hastings entered his life. She stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject for several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of much of his drunken wrath.

When the British painter Nina Hamnett arrived in Montparnasse in 1914, on her first evening there the smiling man at the next table in the café introduced himself as Modigliani; painter and Jew. They became great friends.

In 1916, Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Leopold Zborovski and his wife Anna.

Jeanne Hébuterne

The following summer, the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict and, worse yet, a Jew. Despite her family, soon they were living together and although Hébuterne was the love of his life, their public scenes became more renowned than Modigliani's individual drunken exhibitions.

On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. 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.

After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became pregnant and on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne (1918-1984).

Nice

During a trip to Nice, conceived and organized by Leopold Zborovski, Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita and other artists tried to sell their works to rich tourists. Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures but only for a few francs each. Despite this, during this time he produced most of the paintings that later became his most popular and valued works.

During his lifetime he sold a number of his works, but never for any great amount of money. What funds he did receive, soon vanished for his habits.

In May of 1919 he returned to Paris, where, with Hébuterne and their daughter, he rented an apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière. While there, both Jeanne Hébuterne and Amedeo Modigliani painted portraits of each other, and of themselves.

Death

Although he continued to paint, Modigliani's health was deteriorating rapidly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more frequent.

In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, his downstairs neighbor checked on the family, and found Modigliani in bed delirious and holding onto Hébuterne who was nearly nine months pregnant. They summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani had tubercular meningitis.

Modigliani died without regaining consciousness.There was an enormous funeral, attended by many from the artistic communities in Montmartre and Montparnasse.

Hébuterne, who had been taken to her parents' home, threw herself out of a fifth-floor window two days after Modigliani's death, killing herself and her unborn child. Friends believed they had made a suicide pact and, although her family initially refused permission, Jeanne's remains were released to be buried alongside Modi's.

Modigliani was interred in Père Lachaise Cemetery. Hébuterne was buried at the Cimetière de Bagneux near Paris, and it was not until 1930 that her embittered family allowed her body to be moved to rest beside Modigliani.

Modi died penniless and destitute - managing only one solo exhibition in his life and giving his work away in exchange for meals in restaurants. Had he lived through the 1920s when American buyers flooded Paris his fortunes may well have changed. Since his death his reputation has soared, nine novels, a play, a documentary and three feature films have been devoted to this most tortured of souls.

Personal life

Modigliani was known to be tortured by ill-health and drink. While living in Paris his fights with his then girlfriend, Beatrice Hastings, were legendary among the neighbours. On one occasion a fight descended into a full-blown punch-up with the inebriated duo furiously kicking and pummeling each other until Modigliani hurled her through the window of a ground-floor apartment they were visiting. This chaos in his personal life was contrasted with the calm in his paintings, which he would turn to after these fights had ceased.

Beatrice was sexually voracious, short-tempered and alcoholic. She was born in London, grew up in South Africa, rode horses in a Transvaal circus and worked as a showgirl in New York before arriving in Paris in 1914. Five years older than Modi and already the veteran of two marriages, bisexual journalist Beatrice had a reputation as a wild woman and was working as a journalist on a highbrow magazine when they were introduced. She boasted to a London acquaintance that she had so many notches on her bedpost she had 'nearly whittled away the bed'. Initially thinking Modi 'ugly, ferocious and greedy' she was nevertheless impressed by his work and they began a tempestuous affair of high-drama. She thrived on the violent conflicts they had and used to boast about their battles to friends. She was also the first writer to praise his work in print. Inevitably the life they were living took its toll, she began to look as haggard as he did and decided to leave him before he destroyed her too. After two tumultuous years together she replaced him with a sculptor, her departure led to Modi's increasing his already out-of-control drinking and succumbing to influenza. However it is during his time with her he created some of his best work and when he recovered from the relationship he embarked on the final two love affairs of his life.

Simone Thiroux was 8 years younger than Modi, pretty, blonde and Quebec born the art-groupie was like him a feverish consumptive who expected an early death and was reckless about her appearance, health and reputation. Once after an argument Modi cut her with a piece of glass, leaving a permanent scar. She fell pregnant shortly after they met. By the time she had the child, Modi had moved onto his next conquest and rejected the mother and child completely. Disowned by her family and weakened by childbirth and TB she died shortly after, still desperately in love with Modi. By this time he had moved onto the teenager Jeanne Hebuterne, even more gentle and passive than Modi she was 14 years his junior and a talented violinist. She told her best friend that he raped her on their first sexual encounter, yet she embarked on a relationship with him nonetheless. Posing for him during the day and dragging him home at night she could usually pacify her drunken lover but subsumed her own personality into his, allowing him to sleep with his models and do as he pleased. Eventually their fights became as violent as his previous relationships as he became enraged with her passivity. By 1918 she was pregnant with his child and resented this recent development. They decamped to Nice and she gave birth though the child's birth was never registered as Modi got drunk on the way to the town hall and never made it. Just 10, Jeanne suffered post-natal depression and the baby was sent to a wet-nurse. Five months later she was pregnant again. Rumour has it Modi also impregnated a local woman who gave birth to a daughter. By 1919 Modi was a physical wreck, he'd lost his teeth and looked decades older than his years, he no longer attempted to preserve his looks or his health as his hashish use and alcohol intake increased and he reached the final chapter of his life.

Modigliani had a turbulent 35 year existence, he battled childhood illness and genetic depression, seduced a phalanx of models and artists and fathered at least three children before the drugs and alcohol which fired his creativity ultimately ended his life in a squalid, untidy flat.

Legacy

Modigliani's sister in Florence adopted their 15-month old daughter, Jeanne. As an adult, she wrote a biography of her father titled, Modigliani: Man and Myth.

Two films have been made about Modigliani; in 1958 Jacques Becker directed Les Amants de Montparnasse and in 2004 a movie by Michael Davis starred Andy Garcia playing Modigliani.

Selected paintings

Head of a Woman with a Hat(1907), Portrait of Juan Gris (1915), Portrait of the Art Dealer Paul Guillaume (1916), Portrait of Jean Cocteau (1916), Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne (1918), Portrait of Marios Varvoglis (1920).

Selected sculptures

(Only 27 sculptures by Modigliani are known to exist.)

Head of a Woman (1910/1911).
Head (1911-1913).
Head (1911-1912).
Head (1912).
Rose Caryatid (1914).

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