Who discovered Amedeo Modigliani to the world. Amedeo Modigliani: biography, photos and interesting facts

(1884-1920) Italian painter, graphic artist and sculptor

In modern consciousness, the appearance of Amedeo Modigliani was largely formed under the influence of the brilliant performance of the French actor Gerard Philippe in the film "Montparnasse-19". He created the image of an unrecognized genius who died alone and in poverty. But this is only partly true: contemporaries recognized the talent of Amedeo Modigliani. However, at the beginning of the century there were many artists in Paris, and not all of them were able to assert themselves, become famous and rich. Nevertheless, the legend has been created, and it is very difficult to change the prevailing stereotype.

Biographical information about Amedeo Modigliani is contradictory and extremely scarce. So, according to one of the legends, it was assumed that the artist's mother came from the family of B. Spinoza. In fact, the famous philosopher died without issue.

As for the father, he was not the owner of the bank, as Modigliani's admirers said, but was only its founder. Therefore, the fact that a poor artist in Italy had rich relatives who did not support him in time also belongs to the realm of fiction.

In fact, both Amedeo Modigliani's father and mother came from Orthodox Jewish families. His ancestors settled in Livorno, where the mother of the future artist, Eugenia Garcin, married Flaminio Modigliani. They had four children - Emmanuele, a future lawyer and member of parliament, Margherita, who became the foster mother of the artist's daughter, Umberto, who became an engineer, and, finally, Amedeo. By the time of his birth, the family was on the verge of ruin, and only with the help of Modigliani's friends could they somehow get back on their feet. Amedeo Garcin, Eugenia's older brother, helped more than others. He further helped the future artist, who was named after his uncle.

Amedeo Modigliani studied well enough, but the school did not interest him at all. In 1898, he suffered a serious illness - typhus. Apparently, at this time, Modigliani realized that he could draw. Soon drawing captured him so much that he began to ask his mother to find him a teacher. At the age of twelve, Amedeo began studying in a studio run by Guglielmo Micheli, a supporter of post-impressionism. However, the formation of Amedeo Modigliani took place under the influence of many artists. His work was affected by the passion for domestic artists, primarily representatives of the Sienese and Florentine schools - Sandro Botticelli and Filippo Lissh.

At the end of 1900, Amedeo Modigliani fell ill again - typhus gave a complication to the lungs. On the advice of doctors, he went south and lived for two years in Naples. There he first began to paint sculpture and architecture. In the sketches of the sculptures of the Neapolitan cathedrals, the ovals of his future paintings are already visible.

In 1902, Amedeo Modigliani returned to Livorno, but soon left his homeland again. For several months he attended the Free School of the Nude in Florence. This educational institution was a branch of the Institute of Fine Arts in Venice. There, the famous graphic artist Fattori became his teacher. From him, Modigliani adopted an enduring love for the line, the simplicity of form while maintaining volume. Modigliani liked to paint nudes, admiring the fragility and grace of the female body. He creates mainly chamber portraits, avoiding the deliberate pretentiousness inherent, for example, in the paintings of Picasso. He also paid great attention to space, achieving deliberate asymmetry. At the same time, his works are distinguished by a special lyricism; when studying them, a feeling of fragility and unreliability of the outside world is born.

With the help of his uncle, banker Amedeo Garsena, Amedeo Modigliani travels to Venice several times. But gradually he begins to understand that he must definitely get to Paris, which was then considered an artistic Mecca. In 1906, Modigliani finally settled in Paris.

At first, he enrolled in the Colarossi Academy, but soon left it, because he could not come to terms with the framework of the academic tradition. Amedeo Modigliani rents a studio in Montmartre, where his first Parisian works appeared. But a year later, the artist moves from Montmartre. At that time, he has an admirer - Dr. Paul Alexander. Together with his brother, the doctor maintained a kind of shelter for poor artists. Modigliani settled there in the autumn of 1907. It was Alexander who became the buyer of the Jewess, for which he then paid only two hundred francs.

And a little later, he convinced Amedeo Modigliani to give his work to the exhibition of the Salon des Indépendants. At the end of 1907, five works by the Italian master were exhibited there. Familiar doctors snapped up these paintings. In autumn, Modigliani exhibits again at the Salon, but this time no one buys his work. Depression, complete loneliness, in which the artist found himself because of his "explosive" nature, addiction to alcohol caused the appearance of a kind of internal barrier that so interfered with him all subsequent years.

Amedeo Modigliani constantly communicated with his contemporaries - J. Braque, M. Vlaminck, Pablo Picasso. Fate will give him only fourteen years for creativity. During this time, the young man will become an interesting artist who will create his own unique way of depicting figures and human faces, where swan necks, elongated ovals, somewhat elongated torsos, almond-shaped eyes without pupils will dominate.

At the same time, all Modigliani's characters are easily recognizable, although what we have before us is the author's vision of his characters, close at the same time to decadent stylization and African sculpture.

The portraits of Amedeo Modigliani were written in part and under the influence of Cezanne, whose large exhibition he saw in 1907. From the passion for Cezanne, there are attempts to convey the subject through a special plastic space and a new palette of colors. But Modigliani, in this case, retains an extraordinary vision of the hero, almost always depicting a seated person, as, for example, in his painting “The Sitting Boy”.

Feeling sorry for the artist, some specially commissioned paintings for him to support him. But mostly he painted close people - M. Jacob, L. Zborowski, P. Picasso, D. Rivera. One cycle of portraits was inspired in 1914 by a meeting with the Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova. Unfortunately, only one drawing has survived from the entire cycle, the one that Akhmatova took with her. In it, the dominant space is the famous running line of Amedeo Modigliani.

Acquaintance with Akhmatova cannot be considered accidental. We should not forget that already in his youth, Modigliani went through the influence of the philosopher F. Nietzsche, as well as the poet and writer G. D "Annunzio. He knew perfectly well classical Italian and new French symbolist poetry, read F. Villon, Dante, W Baudelaire and Arthur Rimbaud At the beginning of the 20th century, a passion for the philosophy of A. Bergson will come.

The versatility of interests, passion for travel, the desire to constantly discover new things in communication with contemporaries led Modigliani to turn to different forms of art. Almost simultaneously with serious paintings, his sculptures appear.

Having chosen the path of a free artist for himself, Modigliani leads a bohemian lifestyle. He doesn't graduate from art schools, he just stays in them, tries hashish and transforms from a shy, unassuming youth into a cult figure. All those who knew Modigliani note his unusual appearance and penchant for extraordinary actions. At the same time, the addiction to alcohol and drugs can be explained by the fact that he sought to overcome internal uncertainty or simply succumbed to the influence of friends.

Amedeo Modigliani has a lot in common with Matisse - the laconicism of the line, the clarity of the silhouette, the generalization of the form. But Modigliani does not have Matissian monumentalism, his images are much more chamber, intimate (portraits of women, nudes), Modigliani's line has extraordinary beauty. The generalized drawing conveys the fragility and grace of the female body, the flexibility of the long neck, and the sharp characteristic of the male posture. You can recognize the artist by a certain type of face: close-set eyes, a laconic line of a small mouth, a clear oval, but these repeated techniques of writing and drawing do not in the least destroy the individuality of each image.

At the end of his life, Amedeo Modigliani met the aspiring artist Jeanne Hebuterne, and they began to live together. As usual, Modigliani painted a portrait of a person who became close to him. But, unlike her former girlfriends, she became for him a ray of happiness and light. However, their relationship was short-lived. In the winter of 1920, Modigliani died quietly in the hospital. After the funeral, Jeanne returned to her parents. But there she found herself in complete isolation, because the Catholic family could not come to terms with the fact that her husband was a Jew. Despite the fact that at that time Zhanna was expecting their second child, she did not want to live without her lover and jumped out of the window. She was buried a few days later.

After the death of her parents, little Jeanne was raised by Modigliani's relatives, they kept some of his paintings and did not prevent the girl from getting involved in painting. When she grew up, she became a biographer of her father and created a book about him.

The creative heritage of Amedeo Modigliani has spread all over the world. True, many of the artist's works have not been preserved due to the author's nomadic lifestyle. Often, Modigliani paid with his paintings, gave them to friends or gave them for safekeeping. Some of them died as the First World War was going on. So, for example, a folder with drawings, left by the Russian writer I. Ehrenburg at the embassy of the Provisional Government in 1917, disappeared.

Amedeo Modigliani has become a kind of symbol of his difficult era. He was buried in the Pere Lachaise cemetery. On the grave there is a brief inscription - "Death overtook him on the threshold of glory."

This unrecognized genius died in dire poverty, and now for his paintings at auctions lay out a fortune. The name of the scandalous artist, about whom one of his colleagues said that "the original painter was a star boy, and for him reality did not exist," is shrouded in legends. The work of the great creator, who did nothing for show, cannot be placed within the framework of one artistic direction.

Amedeo Modigliani: a short biography

The Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno in 1884 into a Jewish family. His father declares himself bankrupt, and the boy's mother, who received an excellent education, becomes the head of the family in difficult times. Possessing a strong character and unbending will, a woman who knows several languages ​​perfectly earns money by translating. The youngest son Amedeo is a very beautiful and sickly child, and Eugenia Modigliani does not have a soul in her baby.

The boy is strongly attached to his mother, who quickly recognizes his ability to draw. She sends her 14-year-old son to the local artist Micheli's school. A teenager, who by that time had received a versatile education, forgets about everything, he only does what he draws for days, completely surrendering to his passion.

Acquaintance with the masterpieces of world art

A frequently ill boy, who was also diagnosed with tuberculosis, was taken by his mother to the island of Capri in 1900 to improve his health. Amedeo Modigliani, who visited Rome, Venice, Florence, gets acquainted with the greatest masterpieces of world art and mentions in his letters that "beautiful images have disturbed his imagination ever since." The recognized Italian masters, including Botticelli, became the teachers of the young painter. Later, the artist, who dreams of devoting his life to art, will resurrect the refinement and lyricism of their images in his works.

Two years later, the young man moved to Florence and entered the school of painting, and later continued his studies in Venice, where, according to researchers of the genius, he became addicted to hashish. The young man develops an individual style of writing, which is fundamentally different from the existing artistic trends.

Bohemian life in Paris

A few years later, Amedeo Modigliani, who lost his inspiration in Italy, thinks about the bohemian life in France. He longs for freedom, and his mother helps her beloved son move to Paris to Montmartre and supports all his creative pursuits. Since 1906, Modi, as the artist's new friends call him (by the way, the word maudit is translated from French as "damned"), enjoys the special spirit of the city. A handsome painter, who has no end to fans, does not have enough money.

He wanders around the cheapest furnished rooms, drinks a lot and tries drugs. However, everyone notes that the artist, addicted to alcohol, has a special love for cleanliness, and he washes his only shirt every day. No one could compete in terms of elegance with the irresistible Amedeo Modigliani. Photos of the artist, which have survived to this day, perfectly convey his amazing beauty and sophistication. All the ladies go crazy at the sight of a tall painter dressed in a velor suit walking along the street with a sketchbook at the ready. And none of them could resist the charm of the poor master.

Many mistake him for an Italian, but Modigliani, who opposes anti-Semites, does not hide the fact that he is a Jew. An independent person who considers himself an outcast in society does not mislead anyone.

Unrecognized genius

In France, Amedeo is looking for his style, paints, and treats new friends in bars with the proceeds from their sale. For three years spent in Paris, Modigliani does not receive recognition from viewers and critics, although the artist's friends consider him an unrecognized genius.

In 1909, Amedeo Modigliani, whose biography is filled with dramatic events, meets the very eccentric sculptor Brancusi and is fond of working with stone. The young man does not have enough money for wood or sandstone for future masterpieces, and he steals the necessary material from the construction site of the city metro at night. Later, he quits sculpting because of a diseased lung.

Platonic romance with Akhmatova

A new period in the master's work begins after meeting A. Akhmatova, who arrived in Paris with her husband N. Gumilyov. Amedeo is fond of the poetess, calls her the queen of Egypt and endlessly admires her talent. As Anna later admits, they were connected only by a platonic relationship, and this unusual romance energized two creative people. Inspired by a new feeling, an ardent man paints portraits of Akhmatova, which have not survived to this day.

Most of the works sent to Russia disappeared during the revolution. Anna had one portrait left, which she incredibly cherished and considered her main wealth. Recently, three surviving sketches of a naked poetess were found, although Akhmatova herself claimed that she never posed without clothes, and all of Modi's drawings are just his fantasy.

New relationship

In 1914, the artist Amedeo Modigliani met the English traveler, poetess, journalist B. Hastings, and all of Paris was watching the stormy showdown between the two people. The emancipated muse of a genius was a match for her beloved, and after violent quarrels, insults, scandals that shook the city, a truce follows. An emotional painter is jealous of his girlfriend, beats, suspecting flirting and betrayal. He drags her by the hair and even throws the woman out of the window. Beatrice tries to rid her lover of addictions, but she is not very good at it. Tired of endless quarrels, the journalist leaves Modigliani two years later, who wrote his best works during this period. They never saw each other again.

The main love of the painter's life

In 1917, the scandalous artist met a 19-year-old student Jeanne, who became his favorite model, muse and most devoted friend. The lovers settle down together, despite protests from the girl's parents, who do not want to see a riotous Jew as their son-in-law. In 1918, the couple moved to Nice, where a comfortable climate favorably affects the health of the master, undermined by alcohol and drugs, but neglected tuberculosis is no longer amenable to treatment. In the fall, happy Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hebuterne become parents, and the painter in love invites his girlfriend to register a marriage, but a rapidly developing illness ruins all plans.

At this time, the artist's agent arranges exhibitions and sells paintings, and interest in the work of a brilliant creator increases along with the prices of works of art. In May 1919, the young parents returned to Paris. Modi is very weak, and seven months later he dies in a hospital for the homeless in absolute poverty. Upon learning of the death of her beloved, Jeanne, who is expecting her second child, is thrown from the sixth floor. Life without Amedeo seems meaningless to her, and Hebuterne dreams of joining him in order to enjoy eternal bliss in another world. The girl carried her love to the last breath, and in the most difficult moments it was she who was the only support for her beloved rebel and was his faithful guardian angel.

The whole of Paris saw off the artist on his last journey, and his beloved, whom the bohemian circle recognized as his wife, was modestly buried the next day. Ten years later, Jeanne's family agreed to transfer her ashes to the grave of Amedeo Modigliani, so that the souls of the lovers would finally find peace.

Daughter Jeanne, named after her mother, died in 1984. She devoted her life to studying the creativity of her parents.

Man is the whole world

The artist does not want to know anything except the person himself, whose personality is his only source of inspiration. He does not paint still lifes and landscapes, but turns to portraiture. Abstracted from the realities of life, the creator works day and night, for which he receives the nickname "lunatic". Living in his own world, he does not notice what is happening outside the window and does not follow how time passes. Not at all like the rest, Amedeo Modigliani, who admires the bodily beauty, sees people. The works of the master confirm this: on his canvases, all the characters are like the ancient gods. The artist declares that "man is a whole world that is worth many worlds."

On his canvases live not only heroes immersed in quiet sadness, but also their pronounced characters. The artist, who often pays with pencil sketches for food, allows his models to look into the eyes of the creator, as if into a camera lens. He paints familiar people, children on the streets, models, and he is not in the least interested in nature. It is in the portrait genre that the author develops an individual style of writing, his own canon of painting. And when he finds it, he no longer changes it.

Unique Talent

The Creator admires the naked female body and finds harmony between it and the quivering soul of the heroines. Graceful silhouettes, according to the researchers of his work, look like "fragments of a fresco, written not from certain models, but as if synthesized from other models." Amedeo Modigliani first of all sees in them his ideal of femininity, and his canvases live in space according to their own laws. The works glorifying the beauty of the human body become famous after the death of the master, and collectors from all over the world begin to hunt for his canvases, on which people have unthinkably elongated heads and long necks of an ideal shape.

According to art historians, such elongated faces appeared from African plastics.

Own vision of the heroes of the paintings

Amedeo Modigliani, whose works cannot be viewed briefly, pays close attention to characteristic faces that at first glance resemble a flat mask. The more you peer into the master's canvases, the more clearly you understand that all his models are individual.

Many portraits of a genius creating his own world are sculptural, it is clear that the master carefully works out the silhouette. In later works, the painter adds roundness to elongated faces, tints the cheeks of the heroines with pink. This is a typical move of a real sculptor.

Amedeo Modigliani, unrecognized during his lifetime, whose photographs of his paintings convey his unique talent, paints portraits that do not at all look like a reflection in a mirror. They convey the inner feelings of the master, who does not play with space. The author strongly stylizes nature, but he grasps something elusive. A talented master does not just copy the features of the models, he compares them with his inner instinct. The painter sees images covered with sadness and uses sophisticated stylization. Sculptural integrity is combined with the harmony of line and color, and the space is pressed into the plane of the canvas.

Amedeo Modigliani: works

The paintings, created without a single correction and impressing with the accuracy of forms, are dictated by nature. He sees his poet friend immersed in dreams ("Portrait of Zborovsky"), and his colleague - impulsive and open to all people ("Portrait of Soutine").

On the canvas "Alice" we see a girl with a face resembling an African mask. Adoring elongated forms, Modigliani draws an elongated silhouette, and it is clear that the proportions of the heroine are far from classical. The author conveys the inner state of the young creature, in whose eyes one can read detachment and coldness. It can be seen that the master sympathizes with the serious girl beyond her years, and the audience feels the warm attitude of the painter towards her. He often draws children and teenagers, and his characters are reminiscent of the works of Dostoevsky, which Amedeo Modigliani used to read.

Paintings with the names "Nude", "Portrait of a Girl", "Lady with a Black Tie", "Girl in Blue", "Yellow Sweater", "Little Peasant" are known not only in Italy, but also in other countries. They feel compassion for the person, and each image is fraught with a special secret and amazing beauty. Not a single canvas can be called soulless.

"Jeanne Hebuterne in a red shawl" is one of the last works of the author. The woman who is expecting her second child is depicted with great love. Modigliani, who idolizes his beloved, sympathizes with her desire to isolate herself from the unfriendly outside world, and the spirituality of the image in this work reaches unprecedented heights. Amedeo Modigliani, whose work is covered in the article, penetrates the very essence of human experiences, and his Jeanne, who seems defenseless and doomed, humbly accepts all the blows of fate.

The incredibly lonely genius, unfortunately, became famous only after his death, and his priceless works, which he often gave away to passers-by, gained worldwide fame.

Amadeo Modigliani (1884-1920)

"Happiness is an angel with a sad face"
Amadeo Modigliani.

France. The old Pere Lachaise cemetery is one of the most poetic cemeteries in the world. Great writers, philosophers, artists, artists, scientists, heroes of the French Resistance are buried here. Marble and granite. Almost everywhere they are enlivened by flowers, skillfully matched to the colors.
But there is a large area in this cemetery, where everything looks completely different, monotonous and prosaic. Here in former years the poor of Paris were buried. Countless rows of low stone boxes, slightly raised in the middle by the longitudinal edge of the lid; dull, squat, faceless town.

One of the tombstones bears the inscription:

Amedeo Modigliani,
painter.
Born in Livorno on July 12, 1884.
He died in Paris on January 24, 1920.
Death overtook him on the threshold of glory.

And a little lower on the same board:

Jeanne Hebuterne.
She was born in Paris on April 6, 1898.
She died in Paris on January 25, 1920.
Faithful companion of Amedeo Modigliani,
not wanting to endure separation from him.

Amadeo Modigliani

Amadeo Modigliani belonged to the Paris School. The School of Paris (French: Ecole de Paris), the code name for an international circle of artists, formed mainly in the 1910s and 20s. in Paris. In a narrow sense, the term "Paris School" refers to a group of artists from different countries (A. Modigliani from Italy, M. Chagall from Russia, Soutine from Lithuania, M. Kisling from Poland, etc.).

The term "Paris School" defines a group of artists of foreign origin who arrived in the capital of France at the beginning of the 20th century in search of favorable conditions for the development of their talent.

The direction in which Modigliani worked is traditionally referred to as expressionism. However, this issue is not so clear cut. No wonder Amedeo is called the artist of the Parisian school - during his stay in Paris, he was influenced by various masters of fine art: Toulouse-Lautrec, Cezanne, Picasso, Renoir. In his work there are echoes of primitivism and abstraction.

Expressionism in the works of Modigliani.

Actually expressionism in the work of Modigliani is manifested in the expressive sensuality of his paintings, in their great emotionality.
Modigliani's works combine purity and refinement of style, symbolism and humanism, a pagan sense of fullness and unbridled joy of life, and a pathetic experience of the torment of an always restless conscience.

"Man - that's what interests me. The human face is the highest creation of nature. For me it is an inexhaustible source. Man is a world that is sometimes worth any worlds ..."(Amadeo Modigliani)

He creates a huge series of female portraits, constantly varying the same type of face, new to him, the characteristic features of which are repeated in sculptural portraits and in caryatids: from immediately recognizable to endless transformations.

The faces in many of the drawings are impersonal; some features are only conditionally outlined in them. He focuses on the pose, trying to find the most expressive and precise line of the intended movement.

In the same way he made drawings of the head and profile. He painted at the speed of conversation, as his friends recalled.

Amedeo Modigliani is rightfully considered the singer of the beauty of the naked female body. He was one of the first to depict the nude in a more emotionally realistic way. Nude nature in the work of Modigliani is not abstract, refined images, but real portrait images.

Amadeo Modigliani. Reclining nude with arms folded behind her head.

Technique and warm light scale in the paintings of Modigliani "revives" his canvases. Amedeo's paintings, made in the nude genre, are considered the pearl of his creative heritage.

Amadeo Modigliani. Nude. Around 1918.

Modigliani dreamed of creating his own temple of Beauty, creating images of beautiful women with elongated swan necks. Women have always loved and sought the love of an incredibly beautiful Italian, but he dreamed and waited for the one and only woman who would become his eternal, true love. Her image came to him more than once in a dream.

Are you a lily, a swan or a maiden,
I believed in your beauty, -
Profile Your Lord in a Moment of Anger
Inscribed on an angelic shield.

Oh don't sigh for me
Sorrow is criminal and in vain,
I'm here on a gray canvas
Appeared strange and unclear.

And there is no sin in his fault,
Gone, looking into the eyes of others,
But I don't dream of anything
In my dying lethargy.

Behind the shoulder, where the menorah is burning,
Where is the shadow of the Jewish wall.
Calls the invisible sinner
Subconsciousness of eternal spring.

In the spring of 1910, Modigliani met the young Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova. Their passionate romantic infatuation with each other lasted until August 1911, when they parted, never to see each other again.
"He had the head of Antinous and eyes with golden sparks - he was not at all like anyone else in the world." Akhmatova.

In the bluish Paris fog,
And probably again Modigliani
He follows me unnoticed.
He has a sad quality
Even disturb my sleep
And be the cause of many disasters.
But he told me - his Egyptian ...
What is the old man playing on the hurdy-gurdy?
And under it all the Parisian buzz.
Like the hum of the underground sea,
This one is pretty bad too
And shame and dashing sipped.

They spent an unforgettable three months together. In the artist's tiny room, Akhmatova posed for him. In that season, Amadeo painted more than ten portraits of her, which after, allegedly, burned down during a fire.
These two could be together, but fate was pleased to separate them. Now it's forever. But in those days, the lovers did not think that they were in danger of separation. They were everywhere together. He is a lonely and poor beautiful artist with a colorful appearance, and she is a married Russian poetess girl. When Akhmatova left Paris, saying goodbye to her beloved man, he gave her bundles of drawings, briefly signed with his name.

Anna Akhmatova

Akhmatova, after almost half a century, nevertheless decided to describe her memories of a meeting with an Italian artist and their short, but very vivid romance. She confessed to him thus:
"Everything that happened was for both of us the prehistory of our life: his - very short, mine - very long."

In June 1914, Modigliani met the talented and eccentric Englishwoman Beatrice Hastings, who had already managed to try herself in the field of a circus artist, journalist, poetess, traveler and art critic. Beatrice became Amedeo's companion, his muse and favorite model - he dedicated 14 portraits to her. Communication with Beatrice lasted more than two years.

Beatrice Hastings

In 1915, Modigliani moved with Beatrice to rue Norveyn in Montmartre, where he painted porters of his friends Picasso, Soutine, Jacques Lipchitz and other celebrities of the time. It was the portraits that made Modigliani one of the central figures of Parisian bohemia.

In 1917 - he met Jeanne Hebuterne.

Jeanne Hébuterne

Seeing her, as the legend says, he immediately began to paint her portrait. Amedeo was thirty-three, Jeanne was nineteen. Jeanne fell in love with Modi, and followed him to life and death. She became his last and faithful companion in life.
Modigliani's most passionate love was a 19-year-old artist.

Amadeo Modigliani. Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne. 1919.

Parents were against the daughter's marriage to a young impoverished artist, and Jeanne was Modigliani's faithful companion and loved him until the end of her life. Jeanne Hebuter and Amadeo Modigliani had a daughter.
Amadeo Modigliani died at the age of 36 in a hospital for the poor from tuberculous meningitis.
Zhanna did not want to live without her beloved and jumped out of the window.

Seeing her, he immediately began to sketch her portrait on a piece of paper. Modigliani finally met the one that he once told his close friend the sculptor Brancusi, that
"is waiting for a single woman who will become his eternal true love and who often comes to him in a dream."

“She was like a bird that is easily frightened away. Feminine, with a shy smile. She spoke very quietly. Never a sip of wine. She looked at everyone in surprise.
Jeanne was short, with reddish-brown hair and very white skin. Because of this striking contrast of hair and complexion, her friends nicknamed her "Coconut".

Amedeo was thirty-three.
He was thin, with a painful blush on his pale sunken cheeks at times, his teeth blackened. This was no longer the handsome man with whom Anna Akhmatova walked around Paris at night - "the head of Antinous with golden sparks." He lived in the workshop of Chaim Soutine, where he had to pour water on the floor to escape bedbugs, fleas, cockroaches, lice, and only then go to bed.

Late at night he could be seen on a bench in front of the Rotunda. Jeanne Hebuterne sat next to her, silent, fragile, loving, a real Madonna next to her deity ... ".

Although in recent years he painted almost only Jeanne, he depicted her on his canvases at least 25 times. Stretched proportions. Sharpened brittle features. In postures - painful nervous subtlety. It was said about her that she, with her pale face with perfect features and long neck, resembled a swan.

January 19, 1920.
That evening, cold, stormy and windy, he wandered the streets and coughed angrily. An icy wind blew his jacket behind him. He was restless, noisy and almost dangerous. Friends advised him to go home, but he continued his mindless nightly circling.
The next day he became very ill and took to his bed. Modi's workshop neighbors who visited Modi saw him lying in bed with a fever. Jeanne, pregnant in her eighth month, perched right next to him. The room was terribly cold. Rushed for the doctor. The situation kept getting worse. He was already unconscious.
On January 22, 1920, Modi was admitted to the Charité hospital for the poor and homeless. Two days later he was gone.
At dawn the next day at four o'clock in the morning, the pregnant Zhanna threw herself out of a sixth-floor window and fell to her death.

Amadeo Modigliani. Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne in a yellow pullover. 1918.

Modigliani died on January 24, 1920 from tuberculous meningitis in a Parisian clinic. A day later, on January 26, Jeanne Hebuterne, who was 9 months pregnant, committed suicide. Amedeo was buried in a modest grave without a monument in the Jewish section of the Père Lachaise cemetery; in 1930, 10 years after Jeanne's death, her remains were buried in a nearby grave.

Amedeo Modigliani

And fame came literally the day after death. The funeral was very crowded. It seemed that all of Paris knew and loved Modi's work. (Now, if only during his lifetime!) Buried at Pere Lachaise. Picasso, Leger, Soutine, Brancusi, Kisling, Jacob, Severini, Derain, Lipchitz, Vlaminck, Zborowski and many others stood at the coffin - the elite of artistic Paris.
The suicide of Jeanne Hebuterne became a tragic postscript to Modigliani's life.
Modigliani was buried on January 27 in a modest grave without a monument in the Jewish section of the Pere Lachaise cemetery. He was escorted to the cemetery by all the artists of Paris, among whom was Picasso, as well as crowds of his disconsolate models.
Jeanne was buried the next day - in the Paris suburb of Bagne.
Together they were under the same plate only after 10 years. Relatives, who blamed Modigliani for her death, allowed her remains to be transferred to the Pere Lachaise cemetery.

"His canvases are not random visions - this is the world realized by the artist, who possessed an extraordinary combination of childishness and wisdom, spontaneity and inner purity."- Ehrenburg

"He worked very hard. To leave such a legacy, to create such a pantheon of masterpieces, he needed hours and hours at the easel, he had to work tirelessly, and having a fresh head and open soul, because he seemed to shine through his models, telling everything about them. This not only casts doubt on the legend of the eternal drunkard and the tramp, but refutes it. Modigliani was not only a very good portrait painter, he was a truly brilliant psychologist and analyst, besides, a visionary - in a whole series of portraits he painted, it was literally predicted the fate of those he wrote." Pablo Picasso.

Modigliani, Picasso and André Salmon at the entrance to the Rotunda. 1916

The world recognized Modigliani as a great artist only when three years had passed since his death. Today, his paintings at various auctions are valued at fabulous prices, from 15 million dollars or more.
In the early 1990s of the last century, an exhibition of works by the Italian artist Amadeo Modigliani was held in Italy.

Stills from the film Michael Davis Modigliani

The famous French film "Montparnasse 19" was shot, dedicated to Amadeo Modigliani, in which the brilliant French actor Gerard Philippe played the role of the artist.

"Life is a gift of the few to the many, those who know and know how, those who do not know and do not know how." Amadeo Modigliani.

"I forgot to tell you that I am a Jew" Amadeo Modigliani.

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani - Italian painter and sculptor, one of the most famous artists of the late XIX - early XX century, a prominent representative of expressionism.

Biography of Amadeo Modigliani

"The human face is the highest creation of nature" - these words of the artist could become an epigraph to his work.

Modigliani Amedeo (Modigliani Amedeo) (1884-1920), Italian painter, sculptor, graphic artist, draftsman; belonged to the Paris School. Modigliani was born in Livorno on July 12, 1884. He began to study the art of painting in 1898 in the workshop of the sculptor Gabriele Micheli. Since 1902, he studied at the Free School of Drawing from the Nude at the Florence Academy of Arts, mainly with the painter Giovanni Fattori, whose name in Italian painting is associated with the Macchiaioli movement, akin to the French Tachisme. In 1903, having moved to Venice, Modigliani studied at the "Free School of the Nude" of the Venice Institute of Fine Arts. Since 1906, he settled in Paris, where he took lessons at the Colarossi Academy of Painting. In 1907, Modigliani first showed his work at the Salon d'Automne, from 1908 he exhibited at the Salon des Indépendants. In the cafe "Rotonde" on Montparnasse Boulevard, where writers and artists gathered, Modigliani was among friends who, like him, lived in the problems of art. During these years, the artist keenly searched for his "line of the soul", as his friend, the poet Jean Cocteau, called Modigliani's creative search. If the first works of the Parisian period were executed in a manner close to the graphics of Toulouse-Lautrec, then already in 1907 the artist discovered Cezanne's painting, met Pablo Picasso and for some time was influenced by these masters.

This is evidenced by the works of 1908-1909 (“Jew”, 1908, “Cello Player”, 1909, both in a private collection, Paris).

A particularly important role in shaping Modigliani's individual style was also played by his fascination with African sculpture, its rough-simple but expressive forms and clean silhouette lines.

At the same time, the art of his native Italy, and above all the drawings by Botticelli, the trecento painting and the virtuoso complex graphics of the mannerists, are the sources of inspiration for the master. The complex talent of Modigliani in the portrait genre was most fully revealed.

“Man is what interests me. The human face is the highest creation of nature. For me, this is an inexhaustible source,” writes Modigliani. Never making portraits to order, the artist painted only people whose fate he knew well, Modigliani seemed to recreate his own image of the model.

In sharply expressive portraits of Diego Rivera (1914, Art Museum, Sao Paulo), Pablo Picasso (1915, private collection, Geneva), Max Jacob (1916, private collection, Paris), Jean Cocteau (private collection, New York), Chaim Soutine (1917, National Gallery of Art, Washington), the artist accurately found the details, gesture, silhouette line, color dominants, the key to understanding the whole image - always subtly captured by the characteristic "state of mind".

Creativity Amadeo Clemente Modigliani

Among other outstanding French masters of the beginning of the century, Modigliani seems to be the most associated with the classical tradition.

He was not fascinated by the experiments of the cubists with "pure" space and time, he did not strive, like the fauvists, to embody the universal laws of life. For Modigliani, man was "a world that is sometimes worth many worlds", and the human personality in its unique originality is the only source of images. But, unlike the portrait painters of previous eras, he did not create a picturesque "mirror" of nature. It is characteristic that, always working from nature, he did not so much “copy” her features as he compared them with his inner vision. Using the refined stylization of the model's appearance and the abstract rhythms of lines and plastic masses, with the help of their expression, dynamic "shifts" and harmonic unity, Modigliani created his free-poetic, purely spiritual, sadly fanned images.

The most characteristic feature of his style is the special role of the line, however, in all his best works, the artist achieved the harmony of line and color, the richness of the valères, combined into generalized color zones.

The sculptural integrity of the volumes is combined in his paintings with color modeling, the space seems to be pressed into the plane of the canvas, and the line not only outlines objects, but also connects spatial plans. In the general softness of Modigliani's style, in the light that fills his work, the Italian basis of his art is clearly felt.

Modigliani almost never wrote to the bourgeois and wealthy customers.

His characters are common people, servants, peasants, as well as the artists and poets around him. Each of the images is dictated by nature. Women are full of refined grace or folk energy, look either haughty or defenseless. In "Self-Portrait" the image embodies a restrained lyrical impulse, it seems to be filled with music from the inside. Modigliani depicts his friend and almost the only "marchand" poet L. Zborovsky as immersed in dreams, the expressionist artist H. Soutine as open and impulsive, the more classical painter M. Kisling as stubborn and internally compressed. In the plastic solution of the portrait of Max Jacob, refinement is inseparable from modern syncopated rhythms... For all their originality, these portraits carry the features of a single handwriting (almond-shaped or lake-like eyes, swept noses, pursed lips, the predominance of oval and elongated shapes, etc.) and single vision. In all of them, compassion and tenderness for a person, soft, contemplative-closed lyricism are felt.

Modigliani does not seek to unravel the mystery of the personality of his heroes, on the contrary, each of his images reveals its own special mystery and beauty.

Self-portrait Portrait of the poet Zborovsky Portrait of Chaim Soutine

No less striking page of his work is the image of the nude. Compared with the nudes of other contemporary masters, in particular A. Matisse, Modigliani's nudes always seem individual and portrait. The more contrasting is the transformation of the full immediate life of nature into images, cleansed of everything empirical, full of enlightened and timeless beauty. In these images, a concrete-sensual beginning is preserved, but it is “sublimated”, spiritualized, translated into the language of musically fluid lines and harmonies of rich ocher tones - light golden, reddish-red, dark brown.

An almost inexhaustible part of Modigliani's heritage are drawings (portraits or "nudes"), made in pencil, ink, ink, watercolor or pastel.

Drawing was, as it were, a way of existence of the artist; it embodied Modigliani's inherent love for the line, his constant thirst for creativity and his inexhaustible interest in people; with pencil sketches, he often paid for a cup of coffee or a plate of food. Created at once, without corrections, these drawings impress with stylistic energy, figurative completeness, and precision of form.

Interesting facts: sex life and drama

sex life

Modigliani loved women, and they loved him. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of women have been in the bed of this elegant handsome man.

Even at school, Amedeo noticed that girls pay special attention to him. Modigliani said that at the age of 15 he was seduced by a maid working in their house.

Although he, like many of his colleagues, was not averse to walking through brothels, the bulk of his mistresses were his own models.

And during his career, he changed hundreds of models. Many posed for him naked, during the session several times interrupted by lovemaking.

Most of all, Modigliani liked simple women, for example, laundresses, peasant women, waitresses.

These girls were terribly flattered by the attention of a beautiful artist, and they dutifully gave themselves to him.

sexual partners

Despite the many sexual partners, Modigliani loved only two women in his life.

The first was Beatrice Hastings, an English aristocratic poet, five years older than the artist. They met in 1914 and immediately became inseparable lovers.

They drank together, had fun and often fought. Modigliani, in a rage, could drag her by the hair along the sidewalk if he suspected of attention to other men.

But, despite all these dirty scenes, it was Beatrice who was his main source of inspiration. During the heyday of their love, Modigliani created his best works. Yet this stormy romance could not last long. In 1916, Beatrice ran away from Modigliani. Since then, they have not seen each other again.

The artist grieved for his unfaithful girlfriend, but not for long.

In July 1917, Modigliani met 19-year-old Jeanne Hebuterne.

The young student came from a French Catholic family. The slender, pale girl and the artist settled together, despite the resistance of Jeanne's parents, who did not want a Jewish son-in-law. Jeanne was not only a model for the artist's works, she went through years of serious illness with him, periods of rudeness and outright debauchery.

In November 1918, Jeanne gave birth to Modigliani's daughter, and in July 1919 he proposed marriage to her "as soon as all the papers arrive."

Why they never got married remains a mystery, as the two were, as they say, made for each other and remained together until his death 6 months later.

When Modigliani lay dying in Paris, he invited Jeanne to join him in death, "so that I can be with my favorite model in paradise and enjoy eternal bliss with her."

On the day of the artist's funeral, Jeanne was on the verge of despair, but did not cry, but was silent all the time.

Pregnant with their second child, she threw herself from the fifth floor and fell to her death.

A year later, at the insistence of the Modigliani family, they were joined under one tombstone. The second inscription on it read:

Jeanne Hebuterne. She was born in Paris in April 1898. She died in Paris on January 25, 1920. A faithful companion of Amedeo Modigliani, who did not want to endure separation from him.

Modigliani and Anna Akhmatova

A. A. Akhmatova met Amedeo Modigliani in 1910 in Paris, during their honeymoon.

Her acquaintance with A. Modigliani continued in 1911, at the same time the artist created 16 drawings - portraits of A. A. Akhmatova. In her essay on Amedeo Modigliani, she wrote:

In the 10th year, I saw him extremely rarely, only a few times. Nevertheless, he wrote to me all winter. (I memorized several phrases from his letters, one of them: Vous etes en moi comme une hantise / You are in me like an obsession). That he composed poetry, he did not tell me.

As I now understand, he was most struck by my ability to guess thoughts, see other people's dreams and other trifles that those who knew me had long been accustomed to.

At this time, Modigliani raved about Egypt. He took me to the Louvre to look at the Egyptian section, assured me that everything else was unworthy of attention. He painted my head in the attire of Egyptian queens and dancers and seemed completely captivated by the great art of Egypt. Obviously, Egypt was his latest passion. Soon he becomes so original that one does not want to remember anything, looking at his canvases.

He drew me not from nature, but at home, - he gave these drawings to me. There were sixteen of them. He asked me to frame them and hang them in my room. They died in the Tsarskoye Selo house in the first years of the revolution. Only one has survived, unfortunately, in him, less than in the others, his future is foreseen.

Bibliography and filmography

Literature

• Pariso K. "Modigliani", M., Text, 2008.
• Vilenkin V. V. "Amedeo Modigliani", M. 1970.

Filmography

• In 1957, the Frenchman Jacques Becker made the film "Montparnasse 19" ("The Lovers of Montparnasse") starring Gerard Philip.
• In 2004, the Briton Mick Davis directed the film "Modigliani", starring Andy Garcia.

When writing this article, materials from such sites were used:bibliotekar.ru ,

If you find any inaccuracies or wish to supplement this article, please send us information to the email address [email protected] site, we and our readers will be very grateful to you.

Modigliani, who lived and died in Montparnasse, a foreigner who lost touch with his homeland and found in France the true homeland of his art, is perhaps the most modern of our contemporary artists. He managed to express not only a keen sense of time, but also the truth of humanity, independent of time. To be a contemporary artist means, in essence, to convey creatively the thrill of one's era, to express its lively and deep psychology. To do this, it is not enough to dwell on the outward appearance of things; for this you need to be able to reveal their soul. This is precisely what Modigliani, the artist of Montparnasse, the artist who belongs to the whole world, did very well.

1 (Quote from text published in the magazine "Monparnasse". Paris, 1928, No. 50.)

What can be added to these beautiful words of a sensitive, honest-minded contemporary of Modigliani? Is it just that his work remains the same today for us, for everyone who cherishes true humanity in art, captured in images of high and passionate poetry.

Amedeo Modigliani

“Tell you what qualities define, in my opinion, real art?” once quite old Renoir asked one of his future biographers Walter Pach. “It must be indescribable and inimitable... take it entirely with you. Through the work of art, the artist conveys his passion, this is the current that he emits and with which he draws the viewer into his obsession." It seems to me that, in any case, this definition is applicable to some works of the mature Modigliani.

Self Portrait - 1919 - Painting - oil on canvas

Italian painter, sculptor; belonged to the Paris School. The grace of linear silhouettes, the finest color relationships, the heightened expressiveness of emotional states create a special world of portrait images.

The love of Amedeo Modigliani and Jeanne Hebuterne is admirable. Zhanna loved her Modi with all her heart and supported her in everything. Even when he spent hours drawing nude models, she had nothing against it. Modigliani, stubborn and quick-tempered, was captivated by the gentle calmness of his beloved. It seems that just recently he broke dishes during noisy quarrels with Beatrice Hastings, quite recently he abandoned Simone Thirou and her child, and then ... He was in love. The fate of a poor, tuberculosis-stricken, unknown artist decided to give him a farewell gift. She gave him true love.

Jeanne Hebuterne - 1917-1918 - Private collection - Painting - fresco

Coffee (Portrait Jeanne Hébuterne) - 1919 - Barnes Foundation, Lincoln University, Merion, PA, USA - Painting - oil on canvas

Jeanne Hebuterne - 1919 - Israel Museum - Painting - oil on canvas

Jeanne Hebuterne (also known as In Front of a Door) - 1919 - Private collection - Painting - oil on canvas - Height 129.54 cm (51 in), Width 81.6 cm (32.13 in)

Jeanne Hebuterne in a Hat - 1919 - Private collection - Painting - oil on canvas

Jeanne Hebuterne in a Large Hat (also known as Portrait of Woman in Hat) - 1918 - Private collection - Painting - oil on canvas Height 55 cm (21.65 in), Width 38 cm (14.96 in)

Jeanne Hebuterne in a Scarf - 1919 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne - 1917 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne - 1918 - Metropolitan Museum of Art - New York, NY - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne - 1918 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne - 1919 PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne Seated in an Armchair - 1918 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne Seated in Profile - 1918 - The Barnes Foundation - Painting - oil on c

Portrait of Jeanne Hebutern - 1918 - Yale University Art Gallery - New Haven, CT - Painting - oil on canvas

Jeanne Hebuterne - Love Amedeo Modigliani. That's right, Love with a capital. The day after Amedeo's death, she, unable to bear the grief, threw herself out of the window.

His creative life was, in essence, instantaneous, it all fit into ten or twelve years of frantically hard work, and this "period", oversaturated with unfinished searches, turned out to be tragically the only one.

At the end of his biography, it is customary to put a bold point: finally, Modigliani found himself and expressed himself to the end. And he burned out in mid-sentence, his creative flight ended catastrophically, he also turned out to be one of those who “didn’t live out their own in the world, didn’t love their own on earth” and, most importantly, didn’t do it. Even on the basis of what he did undeniably perfectly during this one and only "period", which continues to live for us even today - who can say where, in what new and, perhaps, completely unexpected directions, in what unknown would this passionate, longing for some last, all-exhaustive truth talent rush to the depths? Unless there is only one doubt - that he would not have stopped at what he had already achieved.

Let's look into it, let's try to look through the inevitable imperfection of any book reproductions. Slowly, one after another, let us unfold these portraits and drawings in front of us, so unusual, strange and monotonous at first glance, and then more and more attracting us with some meaningful inner diversity, some deep, not always immediately revealed inner meaning. You will probably be struck, and perhaps captured by the passionate insistence of this poetic language, and it will not be so easy for you to get rid of what it inspires or implicitly whispers or prompts.

With careful scrutiny, the first impressions of the one-facedness and monotony of these images are easily destroyed. The more you peer into these faces and outlines, the more you are captured by the feeling of addictive depths that lurk either under the transparent-clear, or under the displaced, crumpled and, as if on purpose, blurred surface of the image. In the very repetition of techniques (upon closer examination there will be quite a few of them) you will feel the artist's intense striving for something most important to him, and, perhaps, the most secret in all these people. You will feel that they are not chosen randomly, that they seem to be drawn to the same magnet. And, perhaps, it will seem to you that all of them, remaining themselves, were involved in the same lyrical inner world - a restless, untidy, sensitively disturbing world, full of unresolved questions and secret longing.

Modigliani writes and draws almost exclusively portraits alone. It has long been said that even his famous nudes and nudes are psychologically "portrait" in their own way. In some reference books and encyclopedias, he is called a "portrait painter", par excellence and by vocation. But what kind of strange portraitist is this, who only chooses his models himself and does not accept any orders, except perhaps from his own brother, a free artist, or from a congenial art lover? And who will order his portrait from him if he does not give up in advance any hope of a direct resemblance?

Blonde Nude - 1917 - Painting oil on canvas

He is a born, incorrigible distorter of the obvious and familiar, this eccentric who doomed himself to the eternal search for unexpected truths. And a strange thing: behind the roughly emphasized conventionality, we can suddenly discover in his canvases something unconditionally real, and behind the deliberate simplification - something vitally complex and poetically sublime.

Here in some portrait - an unthinkable arrow-shaped nose and an unnaturally long neck, and for some reason there are no eyes, no pupils, instead of them - as if by a child-spoiler, small ovals shaded or painted over with something bluish-greenish. But there is a look, and sometimes very close; and there is a character, and a mood, and an inner life of its own, and an attitude to the surrounding life. And even something more sometimes: something that secretly excites, that fills the soul of the artist himself, connecting him with the model in some inscrutable ways and dictating to him the immutability, necessity, uniqueness of precisely these, and not any other means of artistic expression. .

Lunia Czechovska - 1919 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

In another portrait, nearby, the eyes will be wide open and extremely expressive precisely in the smallest details. But, perhaps, the simplification of the palette, "excessive" certainty, or, conversely, the "blurring" of lines, OR some other "conventionality" will have an even clearer effect. In itself, for Modigliani, this does not mean anything - neither in one nor in the other case. This is important only as a whole, in the poetic opening of the image.

Jeanne Hebuterne with Hat and Necklace - 1917 - Private collection - Painting - oil on canvas

And here is a drawing in which, it seems, there is nothing finished, in which what is familiar to our eyes is missing, and for some reason the unexpected and optional becomes the main thing. A drawing that appeared as if "out of nothing", out of elusiveness, out of thin air. But this strikingly free drawing by Modigliani is neither a whim, nor a vague careless allusion. He is the thinnest, but he is also the most definite. In its grammatical understatement there is an almost tangible fullness of the poetically expressed, poured out image. And here, in the drawings, as in the picturesque portraits of Modigliani, again there is only something of an external resemblance to the model, and here he is a dubious "portrait painter", and here the nature is transformed by the imperious, not directly related to it will of the artist, his secret and impatient searches, gentle or impetuous touches. As if peering into the one who is now in front of him, having done away with him almost in a caricature or elevating him almost to a symbol, he will immediately throw this model of his on an irreparably unfinished canvas, on a half-crumpled piece of paper, and some strength will draw him further, to another, to others, to new searches for Man.

Modigliani needs his new form, his own writing techniques because of his directness and sincerity. But only. He is anti-formalist by his spiritual nature, and it is surprising how rarely he contradicts himself in this sense, living in Paris in an era of frenzied fascination with form as such - form for the sake of form. He never consciously puts it between himself and the life around him. Therefore, he is so alienated from any abstractionism. Jean Cocteau was one of the first to see this shrewdly: 1 “Modigliani does not stretch faces, does not emphasize their asymmetry, does not gouge out one eye for some reason, does not lengthen the neck. All this develops by itself in his soul. This is how he painted us at tables in "Rotonde", painted endlessly, so he perceived us, judged, loved or refuted. His drawing was a silent conversation. It was a dialogue between his line and our lines "2.

1 (The translation of this text and all subsequent French, English, German texts is made by the author.)
2(Jean Cocteau. Modigliani. Paris, Hazan, 1951.)

The world he creates is amazingly real. Through the unusualness, and sometimes even the sophistication of some of his techniques, the immutability of the real being of his images emerges. He settled them on the earth, and since then they have lived among us, easily recognizable from the inside, even though we never saw those who served as his model. He found his way, his special ability to acquaint the pas with those whom he chose, pulled him out of the crowd, from the environment, from his time, having loved or not accepted. He made us want to understand their longing and dream, their hidden pain or contempt, downtroddenness or pride, defiance or humility. Even the most "conditional" and "simplified" portraits of him are incredibly close to us, moved at us by the artist. This is their special impact. Usually, no one introduces anyone to anyone: it’s very somehow immediately and very intimately.

Of course, he is no revolutionary - neither in life nor in art. And the social in his work is not at all equivalent to the revolutionary. An open direct challenge to hostile phenomena of life around him, contrary to his nature, is rarely found in his work. And, nevertheless, Cocteau is right when he says that this artist was never indifferent to what surrounded him, that he always "judged, loved or refuted." Not only in the famous sarcastic, almost poster-like "Married Couple", but also on other canvases and in a number of drawings, one cannot help but feel how hateful Modigliani is full complacency, cheap snobbery, conspicuous or skillfully veiled vulgarity, all kinds of bourgeois.

Bride and Groom (also known as The Newlyweds) - 1915-1916 - oil on canvas

But understanding and sympathy clearly prevail over judgment and refutation in his work. Love prevails. With what heightened, subtle sensitivity he captures and conveys to us human dramas, with what cautious obscurity he penetrates into the very depths of hidden longing, inescapable and stubbornly hidden from indifferent glances. How he knows how to hear the mute, unspoken reproach of an offended, destitute childhood, a deceived, failed youth. There is a lot of all this, for another lover of thoughtless optimism, perhaps even too much in the gallery of people closest to Modigliani. But what is he to do if he sees this, first of all, and most often in "ordinary" people, in people not from "society", to whom he is always so drawn: in the youth of the urban and rural lower classes, maids and concierges, models and milliners, messengers and apprentices, and sometimes even in the women of the Parisian sidewalks. This does not mean at all that Modigliani is chained to suffering alone, that he is an artist of hopelessly resigned grief. No, he greedily catches and knows how to make the real strength of human dignity, and active, sensitive human kindness, and steadfast spiritual wholeness shine through. Especially - in artists and poets, and among them - especially in those who, with silent stubbornness, gritted their teeth, walked the hard path of an outcast, but not bowed talent. And no wonder. After all, this was also his path - the path of "short life, to the fullest," which he once prophesied to himself.

The Pretty Housewife - 1915 - The Barnes Foundation - Painting - oil on canvas
Pretty Housewife, 1915

Serving Woman (also known as La Fantesca) - 1915 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas
Maid (La Francesca)

However, in these years and later, Modigliani prefers to paint not well-fed Parisian bourgeois, "masters of life", but those who are spiritually close to him - Max Jacob, Picasso, Cendrars, Zborovsky, Lipchitz, Diego Rivera, Kisliig, sculptors Laurent and Meshchaninov, the kindest Doctor Devrain in a military jacket, the actor Gaston Modot on vacation, in an open-necked shirt, some nice gray-bearded provincial notary with a pipe in his hand, some young peasant with heavy hands unaccustomed to rest on his knees, countless of his friends from the Parisian lower classes.

Portrait of Max Jacob - 1916 - Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen - Dusseldorf - Painting - oil on canvas

In 1897 Max Jacob moved to Paris. He was looking for himself for a long time, one occupation was quickly replaced by another. Jacob worked as a reporter, and a street magician, and a clerk, and even a carpenter. He had a special artistic talent: he was well versed in painting and wrote critical articles. Max Jacob often visited exhibitions, where he met Pablo Picasso, and later Modigliani.
Jacob's friends considered him an ambiguous person, an inventor and dreamer, a lover of mysticism.
Jacob was portrayed in his canvases by many artists, but the portrait by Modigliani became the most famous.

Portrait of Pablo Picasso - 1915 - PC - Painting - oil on cardboard

Modigliani first met Picasso when he arrived in Paris in 1906. Their paths often crossed during the First World War: when most of their mutual friends went to the front with the French army, they remained in Paris. Modigliani, although he was not French, like Picasso, wanted to go to the front, but he was refused for health reasons.
The usual meeting place for Picasso and Modigliani was the Rotunda Cafe, one of the most popular establishments among Bohemians. Artists spent hours there in intimate conversations. Picasso admired the sense of style that was inherent in Modigliani, and even once said that Modigliani was almost the only one he knew who knew a lot about fashion.
Both artists were not indifferent to African art, which later reflected on their work.

The scriptwriters of the film "Modigliani" point to the supposedly strong competition between artists, but the memories of friends do not confirm this. Picasso and Modigliani weren't best friends, but the idea of ​​their rivalry was made up to add contrast to the storyline.

1917 Portrait de Blaise Cendrars. 61x50 cm Rome, Collection Gualino

Portrait of Leopold Zborowski - 1917-18 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Amedeo Modigliani met Zborowski at a difficult time. It was 1916, the war, and few people bought paintings, even by famous artists. No one cared about young talents, Modigliani did not earn anything and was practically starving.
The Polish poet Leopold Zborowski was imbued with the work of Modigliani immediately when he first saw the paintings. They became close friends. Zborovsky believed in Modigliani's great future so much that he vowed to make him a famous artist at all costs. Having allocated the largest room in his house for a studio for the artist, he wandered tirelessly all over Paris in the hope of at least selling something. But, unfortunately, the paintings were rarely sold. Zborovsky's wife, Khanka, patiently took care of Amedeo, turning a blind eye to his difficult character.
In the end, Zborowski's efforts were not in vain, and in 1917 he managed to arrange an exhibition for Modigliani in the small gallery of Bertha Weil, who had long relished his paintings.
The exhibition, unfortunately, could not be called a success.

Leopold Zborowski - 1919 - Museu de Arte Moderna de Sao Paulo. Painting - oil on canvas

Modigliani knows how to poeticize the image of a person whom he loves and honors, knows how to elevate him above the prose of everyday life: there is something majestic in inner peace, in dignity and simplicity, in the very femininity of his "Anna Zborowska" from the collection of the Roman Gallery of Modern Art. A lush white collar, raised high on the right and behind, as if slightly supporting the model's head against a dark red background, it was not for nothing that some of the art critics seemed almost an attribute of the Spanish queens.

Anna (Hanka) Zborowska - Galleria Nazionale d "Arte Moderna - Rome (Italy)

Anna (Hanka) Zabrowska - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Anna Zborowska - 1917 - Museum of Modern Art - New York - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Anna Zborowska - 1919 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

1917 Jacques Lipchitz et sa femme 81x54 cm Chicago, Art Institute

Portrait of Diego Rivera - 1914 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

At the end of June 1911, the Mexican painter and politician Diego Rivera arrived in Paris. Soon he met Modigliani. They were often seen together in a cafe: they drank and sometimes rowdy, threw obscene phrases after passers-by.
During this period, Rivera painted "Catalan Landscape", which set a new direction in his work: he discovered a completely new technique.

Portrait de Diego Rivera - 1914 - Huile sur Toile. 100x81 cm Collection Particulière

1915 Portrait de Moise Kisling Milan, Collection Emilio Jesi

Portrait of Henri Laurent, 1915, expressionism, Private Collection, oil on canvas

Portrait of Oscar Meistchaninoff - 1916 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Doctor Devaraigne - 1917 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait de Chaïm Soutine - 1916 - 100x65 cm Paris, Collection Particulière

Chaim Soutine moved to Paris, graduating from the School of Fine Arts in Vilnius, in 1913. A Jew of Belarusian origin, the 10th child in an 11-child family, he could only rely on himself. The first years he lived in hunger and poverty, he worked in the "Hive", a hostel for poor artists, where he met Amedeo Modigliani. They began a very strong, but, unfortunately, short-lived friendship due to the early death of Modigliani.
Chaim quickly developed his own technique and style of painting, and his work became a significant contribution to the development of expressionism.
Due to constant hunger, Chaim developed an ulcer. His face, framed by tousled hair, was writhing in pain all the time. But drawing was his salvation, it took him to another, magical world, in which he forgot about his empty, aching stomach.

1916 Portrait de Chaïm Soutine Huile sur Toile 92x60 cm wngoa

So he wrote friends. But no friendship can cloud the vigilance of his eye (Vlaminck remembered the authoritativeness in his gaze on the model during work). He does not forgive a friend for what he does not accept, which always remains alien to him or even arouses his hostility. In such cases, Modigliani becomes ironic, if not angry. Here is Beatrice Hastings with a self-confident - capricious, arrogant expression on her face.
Beatrice Hastings had an affair with Amedeo that lasted about 2 years.

Portrait of Beatrice Hastings - 1915 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Beatrice Hastings - 1916 - The Barnes Foundation - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of Beatrice Hastings - 1915 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas 2

Beatrice Hastings Leaning on Her Elbow

Beatrice Hastings

Beatrice Hastings Seated - 1915 - Private collection

Beatrice Hastings

But bored, as if looking over people, pretentious Paul Guillaume deliberately casually leaned on the back of a chair.

1916 Portrait de Paul Guillaume 81x54 cm Milan Civicca Galeria d "Arte Moderna

Jean Cocteau Modigliani knew very well as an unusually gifted person. He knew his brilliant, sharp mind, his many-sided talent as a poet, artist, critic, composer of famous ballets, novelist and playwright. But at the same time, Cocteau was also considered the founder of the style of "elegant bohemia", "the inventor of fashion and ideas", the personification of "winged slyness", "an acrobat of the word", an unsurpassed master of salon conversation about everything and nothing. There is something of such Cocteau in the portrait of Modigliani, where he seems to be proportionate in advance to the exaggeratedly high back and comfortable armrests of a stylish chair, all of straight lines and sharp angles - shoulders, elbows, eyebrows, even the tip of the nose: cold dandyism emanates from adopted posture, and from the most elegant blue suit, and from the impeccable "butterfly" - a tie.

Portrait of Jean Cocteau - 1917 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

I do not have access to an exhaustive objective analysis of Modigliani's style. But there are some common features in it that are evident, probably, to any attentive viewer. It is impossible not to notice, for example, how much he has, especially among his earlier works, unfinished - or rather, such that many other artists would probably recognize as unfinished. Sometimes it may seem like a sketch, which for some reason he does not want to develop and improve - perhaps because he values ​​\u200b\u200bthe first impression too much. Someone is annoying; talk about unjustified conventionality, even about "inaccurate" painting. Juan Gris has an aphorism: "In general, one should strive for good painting, which is always conditional and precise, as opposed to bad painting, unconditional, but not accurate" ("C" est, somme toute, faire une peinture inexacte et precise, lout le contraire de la mauvaise peinlure qui est exacle el imprecise").

1 (Quoted from: Pierre Courthion. Paris de temps nouveaux. Geneve, Skira, 1957.)

Or maybe this understatement, combined with the imperiousness of skill, is Modigliani's main attraction for us?

Lionello Venturi and a number of other researchers of his work are sure that the basis of his stylistic originality is a line, as if leading color. And indeed: smooth, soft or, on the contrary, hard, rough, exaggerated, thickened, it continually violates reality and at the same time revives it in an unexpected, amazing quality. Freely capturing planes layered on top of each other, it creates a sense of depth, volume, "the visibility of the invisible." She seems to bring forward this beautiful Modigliani "corporeality", the play of the finest color nuances and modulations, forcing them to breathe, pulsate, fill with warm light from within.

1918 Portrait de Jeanne Nebuterne. 46x29 cm. ParisCollection Particulière

Elvire au col blanc - 1918 - 92x65 cm - Paris Collection - Particulière

Etude pour le portrait de Franck Burty Havilland - 1914 - Huile sur Toile. Los Angeles County Museum

Frans Hellens - 1919 - PC - oil on canvas

Giovanotto dai Capelli Rosse - 1919 - oil on canvas

Girl on a Chair (also known as Mademoiselle Huguette) - 1918 - PC - oil on canvas - Height 91.4 cm (35.98 in) Width 60.3 cm (23.74 in)

Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz - 1917 - The Art Institute of Chicago (USA) - oil on canvas

Joseph Levi - 1910 - Private collection - Painting - oil on canvas

Little Girl in Black Apron - 1918 - Kunstmuseum Basel - Painting - oil on canvas

In the spring of 1919, Modigliani again spent some time in Cape. Sending a postcard from there to his mother with a view, he wrote to her on April 12: "As soon as I get settled, I will send you the exact address." But soon he returned to Nice, where all the last time his work was hindered by the efforts to restore the missing papers. In addition, he also grabbed the "Spanish flu" there - a dangerous infectious disease that then raged throughout Europe. As soon as he got out of bed, he went back to work.

The intensity of his work of this and subsequent, Parisian, periods is truly amazing, especially if you think about the fact that all this time he was already terminally ill, as it turned out later. How many portraits of Jeanne he painted then, and how many drawings he made of her! And the famous "Girl in Blue", and the marvelous portraits of Germaine Survage and Madame Osterlind, and "The Nurse with a Child", which is usually called "Gypsy", and a whole series of his more and more perfect nudes ... All this was created for which some one and a half years.

Little Girl in Blue - 1918 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

The Pretty Vegetable Vendor (also known as La Belle Epicière) - 1918 - PC - Painting - oil on canvas

Pink Blouse - 1919 - Musee Angladon - Avignon - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait de Madame L - 1917 - Painting - oil on canvas

Portrait of a Girl (also known as Victoria) - 1917 Tate Modern - London - Painting - oil on canvas

Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian poet, prose writer and photographer, emigrated to France in 1909. In Paris, while engaged in literary activities and moving in the circles of young artists, he met Modigliani. Like Modigliani, Cocteau and other artists, he spent his evenings at the Rotunda Cafe. It took Ehrenburg a long time to unravel the mystery of Modigliani's restless character, which he described in his 1915 Eve Poems:

You were sitting on the low stairs
Modigliani.
Your cries - petrel, Monkey's tricks.
And the oily light of a lowered lamp,
And hot blue hair! ..
And suddenly I heard the terrible Dante -
Buzzed, spilled dark words.
You dropped the book
You fell and jumped
You jumped around the hall
And flying candles swaddled you.
Oh, fool without a name!
You screamed - "I can! I can!"
And some clear lines
Grew up in a burning brain.
Great creature -
You went out, cried and lay down under the lantern.
http://www.a-modigliani.ru/okruzhenie/druzya.html

Thank you for your attention! To be continued...

Text based on the book Vilenkin Vitaly Yakovlevich "Amadeo Modigliani"