AP Features, February 4th, 2008
Amadeo Modigliani's life as an artist was marred by poverty, stormy relationships and drug use, and cut short by an early death.
Now Spain's Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum has put together an exhibition that allows a profound re-evaluation of this Italian's meteoric career by placing his work in the context of his greatest influences.
In 1906 Modigliani left a cultured life in the bosom of a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, Italy, to move to the bohemian boiler-house that was Paris' Montmartre.
There he toured art galleries and was deeply impressed by the vitality and suggestive power of works by Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso.
Not long after, he met Picasso and began to rent a ramshackle studio next to him in the Bateau-Lavoir at 13 Rue Ravignan.
Unable to sustain the comfortable existence he had enjoyed with his parents in Tuscany, Modigliani easily fell into a lifestyle characterized by the abuse of alcohol — including powerful absinthe — hashish smoking and extroverted behavior.
He painted with exaggerated gestures, sometimes shouted at his models and often destroyed canvases when they did not match expectations.
His only solo exhibition while alive, at the Berthe Weill gallery in December 1917, was raided by the police for being "scandalous." Modigliani was rumored to have slept with most if not all the models he had portrayed nude.
"Finally we are able to evaluate Modigliani alongside the great painters who inspired him," said Guillermo Solana, the Spanish museum's curator. "As you'll see, he comes out rather well, reinforced even, by the comparison."
The Thyssen-Bornemisza has coaxed private collectors and galleries from around to world to loan significant works by the Italian artist and many of the giants who influenced him.
While deep Italian Renaissance roots are clearly visible in Modigliani's compositions, it is possible to trace how his unique style, so prized by wealthy collectors today, evolved.
His characteristic elongated, oval heads emerged after Modigliani was influenced by Picasso's 1907 "Head" and Constantin Brancusi's sculptures, in particular a sublime "Prometheus" (1911) loaned by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington.
"It was hard for us to persuade everyone to part with their Modiglianis," Solana said. The Italian artist's popularity has soared thanks to exhibitions over the years in Rome, Paris and St. Petersburg and now owners are loathe to lend his canvasses, many of which are in delicate states of preservation, Solana said.
"Add works by Maurice Utrillo, Marc Chagall, Matisse, Andre Derain, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Picasso and many more and you can see the level of difficulty we set ourselves," said Francisco Calvo Serraller, the exhibit curator.
The Ivory Coast sculptures that so impressed Picasso find an elegant echo in Modigliani, via the simplicity which Elie Nadelman's 1907 "Woman's Head" (loaned by Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo) inspired.
Some of the most striking exhibits are the Tuscan artist's sculptures, like the serene "Head" (1911-12), hewn out of solid limestone.
The clear lines of Picasso's 1917 "Harlequin" (loaned by the Picasso Museum, Barcelona) fuse with the vivid colors of Cezanne's 1896 "The Bathers" and the contemplative pose of Moise Kisling's 1918 "Nude on a red divan," to emerge as exquisite, stylized nudes.
Modigliani died tragically of tubercular meningitis on a cold winter's day in January 1920 at the age of 35. His distraught girlfriend, Jeanne Hebuterne, pregnant with their second child, killed herself by jumping from the fifth floor of a building two days later.
"Modigliani and his time" runs from Feb. 5-May 18 and provides a wealth of art with which to reassess this fiery, hard to categorize Italian artist.
