| Biography of old oil painting master Amedeo Clemente Modigliani what we can copy |
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Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani
(July 12, 1884 - January 24, 1920)
Italian painter and sculptor
He was born in Livorno, Tuscany, Italy,
the fourth child of the Jewish family of
Flaminio Modigliani and Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s French-born wife, Eugénie
Garsin and was raised in poverty after
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s father's
money-changing business went bankrupt.
Amedeo was also beset by health problems
after an attack of typhoid at the age of 14
followed by tuberculosis two
years later. Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s
family suffered with a history of depression
as did he, and at least some of Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s siblings seemed to
have also inherited Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s stubborn, independent streak.
In 1898 Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s
26-year-old brother, Emmanuel, was sentenced
to six months imprisonment as an anarchist. |
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In 1902, Amedeo Modigliani
enrolled in the Scuola libera di Nudo (Free
School of Nude Studies) in Florence and a
year later moved to Venice where Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani registered to study at the Istituto per le
Belle Arti di Venezia. It is in
Venice that Amedeo Clemente Modigliani first tried hashish and,
rather than studying, began to spend time
frequenting the sleazy parts of
the city.
In 1906, Modigliani moved to Paris, the then
focal point of the avant-garde, where Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani would become 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, Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani was soon
busy painting, at first
influenced by the work of Henri de
Toulouse-Lautrec until Paul Cezanne changed
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s views.
Eventually though, Modigliani developed
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s own unique
style, an oddity of a creative genius who
was a contemporary of the Cubists, but not a
part of their movement. Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani is noted for
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s fast work,
usually finishing a portrait in one or two
sittings.
And, once done, Amedeo Clemente Modigliani never reworked any
painting. Yet, those who posed for him said
that being painted by Modigliani
was like having your soul laid bare.
In 1909, Modigliani returned home to Livorno,
sickly and worn out from Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s debauched lifestyle. Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani did not
stay in Italy long and soon Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani was back in
Paris, tAmedeo Clemente Modigliani’s time
renting a studio in Montparnasse. Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani had
originally seen himself as a sculptor more
than a painter, and Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani began sculpting
seriously after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious
young art dealer, took an interest in Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s work and introduced
him to Constantin Brancusi.
Seeing Modigliani's sculptures, there is
evidence of him being influenced by art from
Africa and Cambodia which Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani probably saw in the Musée de l'Homme. Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s interest in African
masks shows in the treatment of the sitters'
faces.
They appear ancient, almost Egyptian,
created flat and masklike, with distinctive
almond eyes, pursed mouths,
twisted noses, and elongated necks. Although
a series of Modigliani's sculptures were
exhibited in the autumn Salon
of 1912, for whatever reason Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani abruptly
abandoned sculpting and focused solely on
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s painting.
At the outset of World War I, Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani tried to
enlist in the army but was refused because
of Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s poor health.
Perhaps knowing that for health reasons
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s life would be
short, Amedeo Clemente Modigliani carried a death wish, drinking
continuously and consuming large quantities
of drugs.
Known as "Modì" to Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s friends, Amedeo Modigliani was
an extremely handsome man to whom females
were greatly attracted. Women came and went
until Beatrice Hastings entered Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s life. She stayed for
almost two years, was the subject for
several of Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s
portraits, including "Madame Pompadour"
shown here, and the object of much of Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s drunken wrath. Drunk,
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was a bitter, angry person, always
looking for a fight as was depicted in the
famous drawing by Marie Vassilieff. Sober,
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was graciously timid and charming, would
quote Dante Alighieri and recite poems from
Lautreamont's book, Les Chants de Maldoror,
a copy of which Amedeo Clemente Modigliani always carried with him.
When the English 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
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s wife Anna.
Modigliani painted them several times,
charging only 10 Francs for a portrait. The
following summer, the Russian sculptor Chana
Orloffa introduced him to a beautiful
18-year-old art student named Jeanne
Hébuterne who had posed for Foujita.
Jeanne came from a conservative bourgeois
background and was renounced by her family,
devout Roman Catholics, for
her liaison with the painter, who in their
eyes was nothing but a debauched derelict,
and Jewish besides. Despite
her family, soon they were living together
and although Jeanne was the love of Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s life, their public
scenes became even more famous than
Modigliani's personal drunken exhibitions. |
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On December 3, 1917, Modigliani's first
one-man exhibition was 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. That same year, Modigliani
received a letter from a former lover Simone
Thirioux, a French-Canadian
girl, who informed him that she had given
birth to Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s son.
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani never acknowledged the child as Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s but after moving to
Nice with Hébuterne she became pregnant and
on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a
daughter whom they would also name Jeanne.
While in Nice, a trip organized by Leopold
Zborovski for Modigliani, Tsuguharu Foujita
and other artists to try to
sell their works to rich tourists,
Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures
but only for a few francs each. Despite
this, while there Amedeo Clemente Modigliani produced most of the
paintings that would ultimately become
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s most popular
and valued works.
During Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s lifetime
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani sold a number of Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s works, but never for any great
amount of money. What funds Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani did receive,
soon vanished for drugs and alcohol. In May
of 1919 Amedeo Clemente Modigliani returned to Paris, where, with
Jeanne and their daughter, Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani rented an
apartment in the rue de la Grande Chaumière.
While there, both Jeanne and Modigliani
painted portraits of each other and of
themselves.
Although Amedeo Clemente Modigliani continued to paint, by then
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s lifestyle had
taken its toll and Modigliani's health was
deteriorating rapidly, Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s alcoholic blackouts becoming
more frequent. After not being heard from
for several days by Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s friends, Amedeo Clemente
Modigliani’s downstairs neighbor checked in
on them and found Modigliani delirious and
in bed, holding onto Jeanne, who was nearly
nine months pregnant. A doctor was summoned
but there was little that could be done
because Modigliani was suffering from
tubercular meningitis.
Modigliani died without regaining
consciousness. There was an enormous
funeral, attended by all of the artistic
community from Montmartre and Montparnasse.
Jeanne 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.
Modigliani was interred in Pere Lachaise
Cemetery. Jeanne Hébuterne was buried at the
Cimetiere de Bagneux, near
Paris and it was not until 1930 that her
embittered family allowed her to be moved to
rest beside Modigliani.
Their orphaned 15-month-old daughter Jeanne
was adopted by Modigliani's sister in
Florence. As an adult, she would
write an important biography of her father
titled: Modigliani: Man and Myth.
Today, Modigliani is regarded as one of the
greatest artists of the 20th century, Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s works on display in
the great museums of the world. Amedeo
Clemente Modigliani’s sculptures rarely
change hands and the few paintings that
change hands can sell for more than US$15.6
million. Amedeo Clemente Modigliani’s "Nu
couché" (Sur le côté gauche) sold in
November of 2003 for US$26,887,500. |
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