The Tragic Artist

Jeanne Hebuterne, 1919Today is the anniversary of the birthdate of one of my favourite artists of the twentieth century: Amadeo Modigliani. He is known for the elegant and elongated forms he created as a sculptor and painter. He was influenced by African sculpture, the figurative paintings of the Renaissance, and then by Henri-Toulouse Lautrec and Paul Cézanne, but his own style is unique.

Kneeling CaryatidNude Bust, 1915Constantly sketching, loving life drawing, he made as mny as a hundred drawings in a day. Yet he was his own hardest taskmaster and harshest critic, and many of these are gone, thrown out by himself – dismissed as ‘childish baubles, done when he was a dirty bourgeois’, lost during removals in his frequent changes of address, or given away to girlfriends and subsequently lost. 

Head of a Woman (reproduction)Modigliani was born in 1884, and died in Paris aged just 35, in 1920. Suffering from TB, he became addicted to the drugs and drink he used to palliate the pain of his illness, which was further exacerbated by overwork and poverty. He lived wildly and to excess, and in a bohemian era crammed with extraordinary talent and lives lived hedonistically, became the epitome of the tragic artist, starving in his attic. But his beautiful work lives on. 

Scroll through all his paintings here. Images from Wikipaintings.

Click here for a fashion shoot by British Vogue and Sarah Moon, inspired by Modigliani’s paintings.

Teresa, (ink) 1915Big Red Buste (Leopold II), 1913Caryatid, 1911Madame Georges van Muyden, 1917Portrait of Beatrice Hastings, 1916Head of a Girl, c 1918Portrait of Jeanne Hebuterne, 1918Nude, 1917