Modigliani's painting "Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne in front of the door" is the last masterpiece of the last bohemian artist. Biography of the great creator

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

The drawings with which he paid for a glass of wine are now the pride of the richest private collections and major art museums. Modigliani's painting at any auction attracts more attention than the canvases of his contemporaries, highly valued during his lifetime. His sculptures, pictorial portraits and expressive, sensual "nudes" stood out even among the creations of the young geniuses of the "Paris school" of the beginning of the century.

The modern definition of Modigliani as an expressionist seems to be controversial and incomplete. His work is a unique and unique phenomenon, like his entire short tragic life.

Modi means “damned”…

Contemporaries wrote legends about Modigliani's life, many of his own inventions. For example, he spoke of his ancestors as rich bankers, "purses" of the Pope himself. He also called himself a descendant of the great rebel - the philosopher Benedict Spinoza, although he died childless.

But the real circumstances of the beginning of the artist's life were unusual. Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was born in 1884 in Livorno, Italy, to a Jewish family.merchant. The father of the future artist went bankrupt and just before the birth of Amedeo, bailiffs sent by creditors came to the house. According to the then Italian laws, the property of the woman in labor was considered inviolable, and all the valuables, including some furniture, were laid on the bed of the pregnant woman. Eugenia Grasen - Amedeo's mother - always considered this case a bad omen for her beloved son.

She was a well-educated and spiritually developed person, and it was she who supported her son's desire to paint. This attitude to Amedeo's hobby appeared, as another family legend says, when she heard the names of Renaissance artists in the incoherent delirium of her son, who fell ill with typhus. The distinct influence of one of them - Sandro Botticelli - will be found by art critics in the paintings of the mature Modigliani.

Years of apprenticeship

From the age of fourteen, Modigliani received art education at the private studio of Guillermo Michele in Livorno, at the Free School of Nude Painting in Florence, at the Institute of Fine Arts in Venice.

In museums and churches, he studies paintings and frescoes by old masters, at exhibitions - contemporary Impressionist and Symbolist paintings. Many note his general high culture, erudition. He knew by heart many poems - from Dante to Verlaine.

In Venice, another Modigliani was born. They say that it was here that he became addicted to hashish, was fond of mysticism, attended seances. Here the consequences of illnesses suffered in childhood began to manifest themselves, heI had to stop painting to treat my lungs.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the center of attraction for young artists was Paris. A real international brotherhood of artists and poets was formed there, who were excited by new ideas. Modigliani arrived there in 1906.

Paris School

Modi, as they began to call him in Paris, quickly became his own among the inhabitants of Montmartre. A handsome young man with refined manners, a favorite of women, who knew how to wear a shabby suit with royal grace, aroused interest from the first minutes of acquaintance. Among his close friends were Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marc Chagall, Maurice Utrillo - the stars of the new art.

Each of them was able to say his own, a new word in art and achieved recognition. Abstractionism, cubism seemed to be the best means of expressing the impression of a rapidly changing world. The heritage of Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec was used in a new way, many imitators of Matisse, Van Gogh, Gauguin appeared. A rare artist retained his originality in the pursuit of success and material well-being. That was Modi.

Of course, he absorbed the legacy of the past and new ideas. Having met the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, he became interested in sculpture. His stone heads, which he called "pillars of tenderness," have clear references to the primitive art of Africa, which was then admired by many. But this is not a direct analogy of ritual masks, they have their own, unearthly and detached grandeur, noticeable even in small sizes.

Modigliani has almost no landscapes, no still lifes. Hisinterested only in man. And in virtuoso graphics, and in amazing painting, he was looking for a reflection of the personality of the model. Modigliani's nude painting is also a portrait, captivating with the subtle nuances of the characters. With the help of difficult color combinations and an expressive line, the artist tells amazing stories about the people he met, expresses his feelings for the world around him. Least of all, his manner of depicting elongated, refined female faces, figures with complex, often painful bending or turning of the body, reflects the violent nature of the artist, the “idle revelers”, as Modi was considered by some.

Legends of Montmartre

His drunken brawls, countless love adventures, drug trances are remembered with delight or hatred by both friends and envious people. Subsequently, some explained Modi's rampage by his awareness of the short duration of his stay on Earth. Periodic exacerbations of tuberculosis, long hungry times, beggarly conditions took away vitality, and Amedeo did not save them for a serene existence in old age. His life was peddlingly discussed by visitors to smoky cafes in Montmartre. These legends, often exaggerated, became part of Modigliani's Parisian image.

But this image seems much more complicated. There are memories of his kind attitude towards those who are in an even more distressed state, of his reverent attitude towards his mother. And the amount of work done in the last years of his life speaks of inspired and hard work. His constant companion on walks is an album filled with virtuoso drawings and sketches.

He is astonished by his confidence in his talent, in his own style, in the correct approach to creativity. Modigliani's painting is a slow-moving commodity. He lived at the expense of rare connoisseurs who saw his skill. But he did not want to change his manner to suit commercial tastes. And among his colleagues, Modigliani increasingly received real recognition.

The Last Angel

Modi loved women. With the last pennies, he bought a bunch of violets for his next model. He admired the female body on his nudes. Female portraits of Modigliani, where he depicted unearthly faces with almond-shaped eyes without pupils and without a bottom - a declaration of love.

The great Anna Akhmatova has a beautiful story of acquaintance with Modigliani. She has long walks around Paris, bouquets of flowers and poems, passion in the elastic and precise line of her body in the master's drawings. Modigliani's portrait of Akhmatova was preserved by her as a great treasure and accompanied her until her death.

In 1917, Amedeo met a very young artist from a prosperous family, Jeanne Hebuterne. She became the artist's civil wife, gave birth to his daughter, who, having matured, wrote the most truthful book about Modigliani. Jeanne became part of the legend by stepping through a sixth-floor window at the end of January 1920 the day after her husband's funeral.

She was pregnant with her second child, but she didn't want to live without her Dedo. Modigliani's painting "Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne in front of the door" is one of the last masterpieces of the master. Unsurprisingly, some thought thatthe artist depicts in portraits not only the past and present, but also the future of a person. In the guise of Zhanna, there is a calm humility of the future mother before the future, but in a slightly tense gesture of hands there is the birth of a future flapping of wings for a farewell tragic flight …

Life is the best playwright

He was called the last artist of Parisian bohemia. In numerous poems, prose, films about Modigliani, the bright moments of his short earthly journey are sometimes erased to the point of vulgarity. But the main thing is that Modigliani is an artist, and it is difficult to distort the truth of his talent, the eternal novelty of his special outlook on life.