Author(s): Sophie Levy

Art

Amadeo Modigliani displays the dialogue that the young Italian artist maintained with antic and extra-Western sculptures from 1910 to 1914. It specifically highlights studies of heads and caryatides, and Modigliani's patient analysis work, such as modulating facial features. Health and financial conditions forced Modigliani to renounce sculpture in 1914. The second part features portraits of Modigliani's friends, also actors of the Parisian avant-garde from Picasso's circle, such as the writer Max Jacob, the merchant Paul Guillaume, Moise Kisling, Viking Eggeling, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens and Leopold Survage. Beyond friendship, these portraits reveal artistic exchanges, where painters and sculptors became Modigliani's models. In his last years, Modigliani perfected his portrait's style, which made him successful: the frame widens, his palette lightens under the influence of Cezanne. In 1918, he met Dutilleul, who purchased around thirty of his paintings and numerous drawings between 1918 and 1946 and posed as his model in 1919.