Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian-Jewish painter and sculptor who primarily worked in France.He is recognized for portraits and nude art in a modern style typified by a surreal extension of faces, necks, and bodies, which were at first unpopular but have since become highly sought-after. Modigliani spent his childhood in Italy, where he studied ancient and Renaissance art.Modigliani’s father, Flaminio Modigliani, was a famous businessman and entrepreneur from an Italian Jewish family. While they were not as cultured as the Garsins, they knew how to invest in and grow successful businesses. He relocated to Paris in 1906, where he met artists like Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. By 1912, Modigliani was presenting highly stylized sculptures at the Salon d’Automne alongside Cubists from the Section d’Or group.Modigliani’s father, Flaminio, was a famous businessman and entrepreneur from an Italian Jewish family. Flaminio was a wealthy young mining engineer when the Garsin and Modigliani families announced their children’s engagement. He was in charge of the mine in Sardinia as well as the family’s massive 30,000 acres (12,141 ha) of timberland.In 1883, this rich family’s fortunes were turned upside down. The Modiglianis were forced to declare bankruptcy due to a drop in metal prices. Modigliani’s mother, ever resourceful, exploited her social connections to start a school, which she and her two sisters turned into a lucrative business.Modigliani is known to have painted and been interested in drawing from an early age, and even before beginning formal studies, he already considered himself a painter, according to his mother. Despite her concerns that putting him on an art course would interfere with his other academics, his mother supported the young Modigliani’s enthusiasm for the topic.He raged in his insanity at the age of 14, while afflicted with typhoid disease, that he wanted to see the paintings in the Palazzo Pitti and the Uffizi in Florence above everything else. Because Livorno’s small museum only featured a few paintings by Italian Renaissance painters, the stories he’d heard about the famous masterpieces preserved in Florence piqued his interest, and the fact that he might never get the chance to truly see them in person filled him with dread. His mother vowed that once he had recovered, she would take him to Florence herself. She not only kept her word, but she also promised to enroll him at the best painting school in Livorno, Guglielmo Micheli.If you like reading about Amedeo Modigliani, you should read further to learn about him in detail. Get going to read what did Amedeo Modigliani study. Also, you can definitely check out our other facts articles on Barak Obama facts and Albert Einstein facts.Amedeo Modigliani BiographyModigliani’s fame has soared after his death. His life has been the subject of nine novels, a play, a documentary, and three feature films. Jeanne (1918–1984) was adopted by Modigliani’s sister in Florence. She wrote a biography of her father, ‘Modigliani: Man and Myth’ once she was an adult.Modigliani’s daughter, Jeanne Modigliani, was just a newborn when her father died in the ’50s, when he was writing. Nonetheless, Jeanne’s curiosity about her father’s brief life led to the publication of this biography; the results of Jeanne’s study and interviews with people who knew him are today regarded as valuable by art historians. We hear about the artist’s childhood in Italy, his travels and work in France, his romances and excesses, and the difficulties he experienced in selling his works. Despite having friends who would lend him money when he needed it, Modigliani was plagued by poverty and disease.Modigliani’s finest and most sad romance, to the young art student Jeanne Hébuterne, took place in the closing years of his life. Jeanne, a talented painter in her own right, fell in love with Modigliani and pampered him as his health deteriorated. Jeanne was distraught when Modigliani died of TB and took her own life two days later. With the approval of her heirs, her artworks were not displayed alongside her husband’s until the year 2000.Eugénie Garsin, Modigliani’s mother, was born and raised in Marseille and came from a scholarly, intellectual Sephardic family that had resided along the Mediterranean coast for decades. Her forebears, who spoke several languages fluently, were experts on sacred Jewish writings and had built a Talmudic studies school. The family ancestry was traced back to the 17th-century Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza, according to family lore. Money lending was the family business, with branches in Livorno, Marseille, Tunis, and London, though their fortunes fluctuated. This biography includes over 130 examples of Modigliani’s letters, paintings, and artwork, allowing enthusiasts to appreciate and watch how his unique art evolved over time.Amedeo Modigliani SculptureThe Amedeo Modigliani artworks were influenced by the linear shape of the African sculpture style and the figurative Renaissance painters’ depictive humanism.Modigliani did not choose to be classified within any of the prevailing, defining constraints of ‘isms’ such as Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, or Futurism while working during that fertile age of ‘isms’. He was unclassifiable and adamant about his singularity. He was a tragic artist who put paint on canvas to express, ‘This is what I perceive’, rather than to shock and offend with his modern art and paintings.Numerous literary and creative celebrities surrounded Modigliani’s bohemian life in Paris, including Beatrice Hastings, Pablo Picasso, and André Salmon.He was involved in a tumultuous relationship with Beatrice Hastings, a South African poet with whom he resided for two years (1914–1916).Amedeo Modigliani PortraitsModigliani moved to Montparnasse and painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and acquaintances, including Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie ‘Marevna’ Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau.Between 1916 and 1919, the art dealer Léopold Zborowski commissioned several nudes. He paid Modigliani between 15 and 20 francs a day, provided models and materials, and let him use his apartment as a studio. These are among Modigliani’s most well-known works.His early interest in Friedrich Nietzsche, fueled Modigliani’s iconoclastic character.Modigliani lived the majority of his life in destitution. Largely unsuccessful in selling his work, Modigliani painted for very little money.Amedeo Modigliani Cause Of DeathModigliani’s health worsened quickly, and his alcohol-induced blackouts became more regular, despite the fact that he continued to paint.In 1920, a neighbor visited the family after not hearing from him for several days and discovered Modigliani in bed, disoriented and clutching Hébuterne. A doctor was summoned, but little could be done because Modigliani’s ailment, tubercular meningitis, was in its final stages. He died at the Hôpital de la Charité on January 24, 1920.A large funeral was held, with many members of the Montmartre and Montparnasse creative communities in attendance. Hébuterne, who was twenty-one years old at the time of Modigliani’s death, was eight months pregnant with their second child, the first being Jeanne Modigliani.Hébuterne was escorted to her parents’ house the next day. Inconsolable, she pushed herself out of a fifth-floor window, killing herself and her unborn child the day following Modigliani’s death. Père Lachaise Cemetery was where Modigliani was laid to rest. Hébuterne was buried near Paris in the Cimetière de Bagneux, and it wasn’t until 1930 that her enraged family agreed to her body being transported to be buried alongside Modigliani. They are both commemorated by a single tombstone. His gravestone reads: ‘Struck down by death at the height of glory’, his gravestone reads. Hers says, ‘Devoted companion to the ultimate sacrifice’.Modigliani died penniless after only having one solo exhibition and giving away his work in return for meals in restaurants.Did You Know…To his friends, he was known as Modi, a play on the French word maudit, which means cursed.In Paris, Modigliani became intrigued by Paul Cézanne’s post-Impressionist works.Around 6,000 documents from the estate were permanently transported from France to Italy in 2006, considered to be the only ones left. Parisot had the legal authority to validate Modigliani’s work as president of the Modigliani Institut Archives Légales in Rome.Amedeo Modigliani’s nude work is regarded as his crowning achievement. They once caused his solo exhibition in Paris to be abruptly closed because of its originality, warmth, sensuality, and realism.He also painted Blaise Cendrars, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Jean Cocteau, among other well-known contemporary poets and writers. He was also unabashed about his self-portrait from 1919. This particular self-portrait caused a ‘world war’ in the art community.Typhoid-struck Modigliani still praised the masterpieces of Italian masters and raved on their behalf.Modigliani rented an apartment in Dr. Paul Alexander’s neighborhood. He became the much-needed patron of a young artist and purchased his paintings. And was enrolled in classes with Gugilielmo Michell, the painting master.But Modigliani was unconcerned about making a name for himself in the art world and its intellectual avant-garde.At New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Modigliani made his debut at the Berthe Weill National Gallery in 1917 with a ’notorious’ one-man display.He worked on 349 paintings throughout his career.Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly facts for everyone to enjoy! 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Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian-Jewish painter and sculptor who primarily worked in France.
