Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani
© Photo RMN: Droits réservés © RMN-Grand Palais / DR
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Amedeo Modigliani arrived in Paris in 1906 in order to continue his art studies. He settled in Montmartre and started off by painting in a style similar to Steinlen (1859-1923), Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901) and Picasso (1881-1973) in his Blue Period. 1909 marked a turning point. After a short stay in Livorno, where line was already starting to prevail over touch and color, he made the acquaintance of the sculptor of Romanian origin Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957). He moved to Cité Falguière in Montparnasse and devoted himself to sculpture, starting out by creating sculpted heads. He soon gave up on this technique, however, due to deteriorating health and the cost of the materials required, and devoted himself exclusively to painting.
According to the sculptor Zadkine (1890-1967), “Zborowski took Modi to see Paul Guillaume, a rather fat and flabby young art dealer who not only exhibited cubist paintings but also negro sculptures, which were still unknown to the general public, the same kind of sculptures I had seen a few years earlier at the British Museum sporting ethnographic labels. Paul Guillaume agreed to have his portrait painted by Modigliani. Sittings took place in a cellar lit by a strong electric lamp, with a liter of wine on the table.” (1) Modigliani painted several portraits of the art dealer in 1915 and 1916.
The Musée de l’Orangerie conserves a version in which a very elegant Paul Guillaume is presented as the defender of contemporary art, the “Novo Pilota” (New Helmsman). Paul Guillaume rented a studio for the painter and purchased numerous works from him, before the latter’s early death in 1920. His widow Domenica kept a fine group of five paintings, now conserved at the Musée de l’Orangerie.

(1) Ossip Zadkine, The Mallet and the Chisel. Memories of my Life, Paris, Albin Michel, 1968, p.92

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