Description

Amadeo Modigliani ca 1912 ‘Head left profile earrings & necklace’ watercolor

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Private Collection Estate Sale

Extremely rare and precious

Amadea Modigliani signed original large watercolor on heavy paper

‘Head left profile with earrings and necklace’ ca 1912

Size : 45 cm x 37,5 cm (18″ x 15″)

This watercolor drawing is one of the many studies Modgliani made as a ‘worship’ to his friend Anna Akhmatova

Cfr. an excerpt of the Noel Alexandre monograph “The unknown Modigliani”

Anna Akhmatova [1889-1966] is regarded, with Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam, as the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century. She met Modigliani during her first visit to Paris in 1910, on honeymoon with her husband. She returned alone in May 1911 and became very close to Modigliani. Theirs was a union of spirit derived from their shared passion for poetry.

!!! ABOUT HIS WORK !!!

Erotic in its restraint and languid, sensual pose, it evokes the elongated body and ‘helmet’ of hair of the Egyptian queens and goddesses depicted in the Louvre reliefs Modigliani and Akhmatova returned to, time and again, during the summer of 1911.

Modigliani saw, portrayed in these female images of ancient Egypt, Akhmatova’s own extraordinary beauty and noble, statuesque form. Given his mystical nature, he may have imagined her as the reincarnation of an Egyptian queen or female deity

Akhmatova records Modigliani giving her some sixteen drawings he drew of her. All disppeared. In her memories of Modigliani (Memoir on Modigliani dated 1958-1965 and included with memoirs on Osip Mandelstam in Pages from a Diary) she recalls their love for each other.

Purchased in 1982 from the New York Gallery ‘Perls’

Will be delivered with COA and providence

Info on artist

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 – January 24, 1920) was an Italian artist who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by poverty, overwork and addiction to alcohol and narcotics.

Having been exposed to erudite philosophical literature as a young boy under the tutelage of Isaco Garsin, his maternal grandfather, he continued to read and be influenced through his art studies by the writings of Nietzsche, Baudelaire, Carducci, Comte de Lautréamont, and others, and developed the belief that the only route to true creativity was through defiance and disorder.

In 1906 Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde. In fact, his arrival at the centre of artistic experimentation coincided with the arrival of two other foreigners who were also to leave their marks upon the art world: Gino Severini and Juan Gris.

He sought the company of artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues. Modigliani’s behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish. While drunk, he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well-known as that of Vincent van Gogh.

During his early years in Paris, Modigliani worked at a furious pace. He was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day. However, many of his works were lost—destroyed by him as inferior, left behind in his frequent changes of address, or given to girlfriends who did not keep them. He was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cézanne. Eventually he developed his own unique style, one that cannot be adequately categorized with other artists.

Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie “Marevna” Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.

In 1917 the Russian sculptor Chana Orloff introduced him to a beautiful 19-year-old art student named Jeanne Hébuterne who had posed for Tsuguharu Foujita. From a conservative bourgeois background, Hébuterne was renounced by her devout Roman Catholic family for her liaison with the painter, whom they saw as little more than a debauched derelict. Despite her family’s objections, soon they were living together, and although Hébuterne was the current love of his life, their public scenes became more renowned than Modigliani’s individual drunken exhibitions.

On December 3, 1917, Modigliani’s first one-man exhibition opened at the Berthe Weill Gallery. The chief of the Paris police was scandalized by Modigliani’s nudes and forced him to close the exhibition within a few hours after its opening.

After he and Hébuterne moved to Nice, she became pregnant and on November 29, 1918 gave birth to a daughter whom they named Jeanne (1918–1984). When Modigliani died on January 24, 1920 Hébuterne was pregnant with their second child.