Amedeo Modigliani Italian, 1884-1920

Amedeo Modigliani was born on July 12, 1884, in Livorno, Italy. His family was cultured but financially strapped. He suffered from poor health from childhood; plagued by a succession of serious illnesses, he came to embody the archetype of the suffering, "cursed" artist. His initial health struggles included pleurisy and a near-fatal bout of typhoid fever, followed by tuberculosis. These episodes left him physically frail and plagued him throughout his life.

He began studying painting at the age of fourteen, encouraged by his mother. He tried his hand at sculpture in the summer of 1902 and, the following year, attended the Reale Istituto di Belle Arti in Venice.

In early 1906, Modigliani left for Paris and settled in Montmartre, where he enrolled at the Académie Colarossi for a two-year course. He was a regular at cafés, browsed the stalls of booksellers and art dealers, visited galleries and museums, and divided his time between Montparnasse and Montmartre—then the epicenters of avant-garde artistic genius. He and his friends frequently gathered at the Bateau-Lavoir, a legendary haunt of the Parisian bohemian set.

His early works show the influence of Paul Cézanne, Paul Gauguin, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. In the autumn of 1907, he met his first patron, Dr. Paul Alexandre, who purchased his work right up until the outbreak of World War I. Modigliani exhibited at the Salon d'Automne in 1907 and 1912, and at the Salon des Indépendants in 1908, 1910, and 1911.

In 1909, he met Constantin Brancusi while both artists were living in Montparnasse; This friendship steered him toward sculpture, a medium to which he primarily devoted himself from 1909 to 1914, without ever completely abandoning drawing and painting. Nevertheless, the majority of his paintings date from the years 1916 to 1919.

His circle of friends initially included Max Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz, and the Portuguese painter Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso, later expanding to encompass Tsugouharu Foujita, Moïse Kisling, Jules Pascin, the Sitwells, Chaïm Soutine, and Maurice Utrillo. He also associated with Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Juan Gris, Blaise Cendrars, Jean Cocteau, and Léopold Survage. Paul Guillaume, a young art dealer, became his first commercial patron (1914–1916), followed by Léopold Zborowski, who took over this role in 1917.

His painting—particularly his nudes—shocked the public of the time; during the only solo exhibition held in his lifetime, at the Berthe Weill gallery in December 1917, the police had to intervene to quell the scandal by removing his canvases from the shop window.

In March 1917, Modigliani met Jeanne Hébuterne, a young artist who became his partner and his favorite model. From March/April 1918 to May 1919, the couple lived in the south of France, between Nice and Cagnes. This move was made partly to treat the painter's tuberculosis, away from the harsh Parisian climate. Their daughter, Jeanne, was born in Nice in November 1918.

Constantly destitute and weakened by illness, Modigliani engaged in excessive behavior; alcohol and hashish, far from soothing his fragile health, only intensified the darker side of his personality. During his own lifetime, Modigliani fueled the myth of the artiste maudit—the doomed artist. Modigliani died in Paris on January 24, 1920, claimed by tuberculous meningitis exacerbated by years of destitution and excess. Jeanne Hébuterne, pregnant with their second child, took her own life the following day.