Modigliani and His Models at The Royal Academy of Arts
London - Modigliani and His Models will be the first major exhibition of the sculptor and painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) to be held in Great Britain for over forty years. This exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, will draw on public and private collections from Great Britain, Europe, the United States, South America and Japan, and will include examples of his nudes and portraits together with a small selection of his sculptures and paintings of caryatids. The exhibition will consist of approximately 55 outstanding pieces, each of which has been carefully selected to show a particular aspect of his work.
Modigliani is one of the best known but equally most misunderstood artists of the twentieth century. Today his graceful portraits and sensuous nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career relatively few, apart from his fellow artists, were aware of his gift. This exhibition will demonstrate to a London public Modigliani’s very special place in the early history of modernism.
By using a range of traditional themes, such as portraiture, the nude and aspects of classical and primitive sculpture, Modigliani invented a unique and instantly recognizable visual language that is both seductive and highly disciplined. Fiercely individual and idiosyncratic, Modigliani remained independent of any movement or style. His art drew on a variety of sources, from the European figurative painting tradition, to the hieratic forms of Egyptian, classical and African sculpture.
The exhibition will focus on Modigliani’s enduring fascination with the human form and physiognomy. It will include several examples of his best known portraits, including people from the artist’s milieu in Montparnasse, such as Picasso, Juan Gris and Paul Guillaume; the images of peasants and young working girls and boys that he painted in 1918–19 in the South of France and his Parisian portraits from 1917 until his death in 1920, which with their long, necks, oval faces, almond-shaped eyes and small, pursed lips, conform most obviously to what is now perceived as the artist’s signature style. The exhibition will also reunite a significant numbers of Modigliani’s sensual and audacious nudes, which, like his portraits, draw on traditional precedents yet at the same time are both highly original and modern.
Born into a cultivated Jewish family from Livorno, in Italy, Modigliani studied in Florence and Venice, before moving to Paris in 1906. Within the artistic milieu of the French capital, he became legendary for his dissolute bohemian life. His restlessness was not, however, reflected in his art, which was restricted, apart from a handful of landscapes, solely to the depiction of the human form.
A combination of ill health, alcohol and drug abuse led to the artist’s premature death, aged 35. The day after he died, Jeanne Hébuterne, his pregnant lover and mother of his small daughter, committed suicide by throwing herself from her parents’ fifth-floor apartment. It was the beginning of the legend and fame that grew around the artist.
In the last twenty years, the Royal Academy of Arts has been privileged to show a number of masterpieces by Modigliani. In 1989, several outstanding works by Modigliani were included in the landmark exhibition, Italian Art in the Twentieth Century and in 1993 the Royal Academy of Arts, with great success, was delighted to show the collection of Modigliani drawings belonging to Paul Alexandre, his physician and first great patron.
This exhibition is organized by the Royal Academy of Arts and curated by Simonetta Fraquelli, a specialist in 20th century Italian art, and Norman Rosenthal, Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy of Arts. Exhibition 8 July – 15 October 2006.
A full color catalogue, published by RA Publications, accompanies the exhibition and will include newly commissioned essays by leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic. The catalogue will continue to contribute to the critical re-evaluation of this remarkable artist.
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