Modigliani, Amedeo

(1884-1920, Italian)

Amedeo Modigliani oil painting reproductions

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 - January 24, 1920) was an Italian painter and sculptor. Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906, where he developed his unique style. Influenced by the artists in his circle of friends, and by primitive art, Modigliani's oeuvre was nonetheless unique. He died of tubercular meningitis - exacerbated by a lifestyle of excess - at the age of 35.

Modigliani was born into a Jewish family in Livorno, Italy.

Livorno was a relatively new city, by Italian standards. The city on the Tyrrhenian coast dates from around 1600, when it was transformed from a swampy village into a seaport. The Livorno that Modigliani knew was a bustling centre of commerce focused upon seafaring and shipwrighting, but its cultural history lay in being a refuge for those persecuted for their religion. His own maternal great-great-grandfather was one Solomon Garsin, a Jew who had immigrated to Livorno in the eighteenth century as a religious refugee.

Modigliani was the fourth child of Flaminio Modigliani and his wife, Eugenia Garsin. His father was in the money-changing business, but when the business went bankrupt, the family lived in dire poverty. In fact, Amedeo's birth saved the family from certain ruin, as, according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. When bailiffs entered the family home, just as Eugenia went into labour, the family protected their most valuable assets by piling them on top of the expectant mother.

Beset with health problems after a bout of typhoid at the age of fourteen, two years later he contracted the tuberculosis which would affect him for the rest of his life.

Amedeo Modigliani had a particularly close relationship with his mother, who taught her son at home until he was ten. To help him recover from his many childhood illnesses, she took him to Naples in Southern Italy, where the warmer weather was conducive to his convalescence.

His mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his ability to pursue art as a vocation. When he was eleven years of age, she had noted in her diary that:

"The child's character is still so unformed that I cannot say what I think of it. He behaves like a spoiled child, but he does not lack intelligence. We shall have to wait and see what is inside this chrysalis. Perhaps an artist?"

Ref: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amedeo Modigliani museum quality oil painting reproductions