Amedeo Modigliani

Elena: Wouldnt you agree that the commercial price of a painting doesnt always reflect its artistic merit? If so, whats the point of talking about money and negotiations?

Once, this artist almost got into a fight with his fellow craftsman, arguing the pointlessness of depicting nature. There is no such thing as landscape, he shouted, convinced that humans were the only worthy subject for art. I think that man is a world which sometimes surpasses all worlds, wrote Amedeo Modigliani in one of his messages. He was born on July 12, 1884, in the Italian city of Livorno, and was the fourth child in the family of a small merchant, Flaminio Modigliani. Amedeo never felt strong paternal feelings, but he deeply loved his intelligent and understanding mother, Eugenia Gorsen. Once, her excellent knowledge of European culture and foreign languages saved the family from poverty. When her husband went bankrupt again, Eugenia began translating, writing articles, and also organized a real private school of French and English in their home. When Amedeo entered the lycée, he found that school lessons were less interesting than at home, so he studied reluctantly. Eugenia, who closely followed the development of her son, wrote in her diary: Lets see what will come out of this cocoon. Maybe an artist. Having discovered artistic abilities in her son, she allowed him to attend the studio of an artist, and after several years, she agreed with the decision of 15-year-old Amedeo to quit museum studies for painting. However, in the winter of 1900, he had to abandon lessons in the studio due to pulmonary tuberculosis. For more than a year, his mother took him to resorts. Having recovered from the illness in the spring of 1902, Amedeo resumed his studies. He attended a free drawing school in Florence for a year, then in Venice, and at the beginning of 1906 he went to Paris. Appearing in Montmartre, the 22-year-old Modigliani impressed everyone with his perfect French, bright black eyes, aristocratic politeness, and friendliness. His paintings were of no interest to anyone, so he made signs for shops to earn a living. A year later, Modigliani began participating in exhibitions. His works hung next to the canvases of Picasso and Matisse, with whom Amedeo was friends and whose influence he briefly experienced. In some early paintings by Modigliani, his fascination with Cézanne is also noticeable. But after several years, traces of anyones influence disappeared from Amedeos work; his own lines appeared, distorting nature, his contrasting colors that conveyed the character of the models. Paris turned out to be an unbearable test for Modigliani. Very soon, this city transformed him from an imposing, even-tempered, and restrained young man into a crumpled, feverishly tense, and sometimes aggressive drunkard. Due to the constant lack of money, he could not afford decent housing and often wandered around the city in search of cheap accommodation. Several times, exhausted and emaciated Modigliani left for his native Italy to his mother, but he could not stay away from the capital of France and the world of art for long. Paris is my workshop, my workplace, he wrote to a friend – In Paris, suffering stimulates my work. In Paris, in 1910, Amedeo met Anna Akhmatova, who was 20 years old. You are like an obsession to me, he once confessed to her. They walked through parks and along the streets at night, never talking about anything earthly. I was struck by how Modigliani found beauty in a deliberately unattractive person. I already thought then: probably he sees everything differently than we do, Akhmatova recalled. In 1915, Modigliani began an affair with the English journalist Beatrice Hastings. Prone to extravagance, she called Amedeo both a pearl and a pig. There was a lot of absurdity, clumsiness, eccentricity, and even humor in their relationship, wrote biographers of Modigliani, noting at the same time that Hastings had a great influence on the artist. Two years later, she left Modigliani, and several months later he met a girl – the complete opposite of Beatrice. He was 33, she was 19. Everyone who saw them together immediately recognized in the shy and silent Jeanne not just the artists friend, but his wife. A year later, they had a daughter, and another year later, when Jeanne was expecting their second child, Amedeo Modigliani, who had long been tormented by tuberculosis and nephritis, died suddenly. The next day, January 25, 1920, Jeanne jumped out the window, unable to bear being separated from her beloved. Literally immediately after the funeral, his paintings, which he often gave away during his lifetime, soared in price.