Amedeo Modigliani
1884–1920 · Early Modern (Fauvism, Cubism, Expressionism)
Biography
Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920), an Italian artist who worked in Paris, created elegant portraits and nudes with elongated faces and almond eyes. Poor and ill, he died of tuberculosis at thirty-five; fame came only after his death.
From the artist’s life
Modigliani was sickly all his life: he had pleurisy at 11, typhoid at 14 and tuberculosis at 16; his fragile health, combined with his self-destructive passions, gave him little chance of a long life. In January 1920 he drank heavily every night and wandered the cold streets in shirtsleeves. In the middle of the month agonising kidney pains forced him to bed; he coughed up blood and had a high fever. Jeanne, nine months pregnant and unable to cope with the situation, could not nurse the painter. A few days later (the Portrait of Marios Varvoglis was not yet dry on the easel) a doctor was finally called, who found the artist in an advanced stage of tubercular meningitis. Modigliani died on 24 January (his grave pictured); shortly afterwards Jeanne took her own life.
From the page of Portrait of Marios Varvoglis
