Biography of Amedeo Modigliani
Livorno, 12 July 1884 - Parigi, 24 January 1920
Modigliani was born into a bourgeois family, which was a member of the Jewish community in Livorno. In August 1898 he began training at the studio of Gugliemo Micheli (faithful pupil of Giovanni Fattori), where many other young artists also attended, such as Oscar Ghiglia, with whom he formed a strong friendship. Between 1902 and 1903 he studied at the Scuola Libera del Nudo at the Academies of Florence, with Fattori, and Venice.
His early works, such as Stradina Toscana (1898) on exhibit in Museo Civico Giovanni Fattori, were influenced by the “macchiaiola” school, life painting built with quick touches of colour side by side. In 1906 he moved permanently to Paris, where he met artists, visited galleries and exhibitions and modified his pictorial language: in portraits, a theme he preferred throughout his career, he experimented with the expressive capacities of colour and synthesised forms using sharp brushstrokes to create volume.
He returned twice to Livorno in 1909 and 1913, meeting his old friends and frequenting the Caffè Bardi in Piazza Cavour, a rendezvous for artists. Between 1911 and 1913 he devoted himself to marble and stone sculpture, characterised by sharp faces and archaic features reminiscent of African art. In Livorno he worked on a number heads, which he then destroyed because they did not gain the favour of his colleagues. He did not give up painting, with a personal style that continued to evolve, playing on the use of just a few tones of colour and line with expressive value, on the simplification of forms, with his typical oval faces, eyes often devoid of pupils and ever-lengthening necks. He painted portraits of women, children and passers-by; of artist friends, such as Moïse Kisling (1915, Milan Pinacoteca di Brera); of patrons, merchants and gallery owners, such as Paul Guillame sitting (1916, Milan, Museo del Novecento); of his companions, such as Portrait of Beatrice Hastings (1915, Milan, Museo del Novecento) and, as of 1916, female nude statues, such as Nude lying with joined hands (1917-18, Turin, Pinacoteca Giovanni and Mariella Agnelli).
After having exhibited many works in Paris and other European cities, in 1917 his first solo exhibition at the Berthe Weill Gallery in Paris was immediately closed due to the scandal caused by his nudes.
Having suffered poor health from his youth, aggravated by a dissolute life, he fell ill and died at the age of only 35 from tuberculous meningitis. He was buried in Paris.
In 1988 a memorial stone was placed in his memory in the Famedio of illustrious Livorno people in Montenero.
In the Giovanni Fattori Museum in Livorno, in addition to one sketch with sketches on the back by Amedeo Modigliani, there is also one painting attributed to him: Stradina Toscana (attr.), around 1898
(Sources: Giovanni Fattori Museum of the Municipality of Livorno website; scientific content by the Department of Civilization and Forms of Knowledge of the University of Pisa)
