Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist born in Livorno of Jewish heritage, practicing both painting and sculpture who pursued his career for the most part in France.
There he developed a unique style : today his graceful portraits and lush nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career few apart from his fellow artists were aware of his gifts. Modigliani had to struggle against poverty and chronic ill health, dying of tuberculosis and excesses of drink and drugs at the age of 35.His Reclining Nude With Hair Undone (60cm x 92) is one of his most famous paintings and one of a series of Nudes he made before his early death in 1920. This Nude was bought in 1989 by the City of Osaka for $ 13.8 million for a city museum that was not yet built. It is still in Japan.
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist born in Livorno of Jewish heritage, practicing both painting and sculpture who pursued his career for the most part in France. There he developed a unique style : today his graceful portraits and lush nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career few apart from his fellow artists were aware of his gifts. Modigliani had to struggle against poverty and chronic ill health, dying of tuberculosis and excesses of drink and drugs at the age of 35.This portrait of the austo-hungarian painter Moise Kisling (born in Krakow in 1891- deceased in France in 1953) was made in 1915 and is an oil on canvas. It was part of the Impressionists collection of Leo Rogers which was sold in 1972 on auction for a total of $2.2 million, the highlight being Portrait of Moise Kisling which went for 100,000 Gns ($273,000) to the Pinacoteca in Milan, Italy
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist born in Livorno of Jewish heritage, practicing both painting and sculpture who pursued his career for the most part in France. There he developed a unique style : today his graceful portraits and lush nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career few apart from his fellow artists were aware of his gifts. Modigliani had to struggle against poverty and chronic ill health, dying of tuberculosis and excesses of drink and drugs at the age of 35.In 1965, the Young Farmer fetched £ 22,320 at Parke-Bernet in New York and Christie's sold it for £ 59,574 in 1969 in Tokyo. It was the first sale of Christie's in Japan which was a great success. In 2006, the portrait of the art dealer Paul Guillaune who helped Modigliani in his débuts went for $ 4.8 million under the hammer at Sotheby's to Nahmad Gallery, dealers in New York.After the First World War, Modigliani returned to Paris. After several successful exhibitions in England, English collectors started to buy his paintings. But by the end of the year Modigliani became seriously ill with tuberculosis. On January 24 1920 he died. On the following day the pregnant his companion Jeanne Hébuterne committed suicide. A portrait of her went for $26.9 million in a sale in 2006 ; it had fetched $15.1 million in 1998.The artist and his companion are buried together in the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Their orphan daughter Jeanne (1918-1984) was adopted by Modigliani’s sister in Florence; later she would write an important biography of her father Modigliani:Man and Myth.
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884-1920) was an Italian artist born in Livorno of Jewish heritage, practicing both painting and sculpture who pursued his career for the most part in France. In 1906, Modigliani settled in Paris, where he encountered the works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Rouault, and Pablo Picasso (in his "blue period") and assimilated their influence. The strong influence of Paul Cezanne's paintings is clearly evident, both in Modigliani's deliberate distortion of the figure and the free use of large, flat areas of color. A fine example of Modigliani's figure paintings is a Reclining Nude (1917; Guggenheim Museum), an elegant, arresting arrangement of curved lines and planes as well as a striking idealization of feminine sexuality. This Nudo Seduto belonged to the Henri Ford's II collection that went on auction in May 1980. Over 20,000 people visited the 5 days exhibition prior to the sale. It was sold on the 13th of May 1980 for $600,000.The total of the sale reached $ 18.3 million. Henri Ford II had said that he would come to the sale but then told the auctioneers that there was a strike in Detroit and that he preferred not to be seen at the sale :"It would look very bad, he said, if I was seen to have made 10 million (the amount of the estimate) or more while I was telling the automobile constructors to get stuffed for $1.5." When the autioneers told him the sale had made 18 millions, he was nonplussed and said:"Well done, Jesus, people are crazy."
Two comments that say a lot about the super-rich people's mentality.
