Amadeo modigliani

11

Nude, frontal view, forearms raised, tattoos, necklaces, and bead belts, c. 1911

SCULPTURAL SOURCES

Black crayon on paper, 42.9 × 26.7 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts, Rouen, gift of Blaise Alexandre, 2001

29

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30

Caryatid, c. 1913–14

SCULPTURAL SOURCES

Graphite, ink wash and pastel on paper, 53 × 43.8 cm Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris

49

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46

Antonia, c. 1915

PORTRAITIST OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Oil on canvas, 82 × 46 cm Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, Jean Walter and Paul Guillaume collection

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51

Max Jacob, 1915

PORTRAITIST OF THE AVANT-GARDE

Crayon on paper, 34.5 × 26.5 cm Musée des Beaux-Arts, Quimper

81

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75

Manuel Humbert, 1916 Oil on canvas, 66 × 51 cm Private collection, USA

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI: THE INNER EYE

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92

Seated Nude With a Shirt, 1917

THE LAST YEARS

Oil on canvas, 92 × 67.5 cm LaM, Villeneuve-d’Ascq, former collection of Roger Dutilleul

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BIO GRAPHIES OF THE ARTIST ’ S MODELS fig. 74

Marie Vorobieff Homage to Friends from Montparnasse, 1962 Oil on canvas, 161 × 305 cm Musée du Petit Palais, Geneva

From le to right: Diego Rivera, Marie Vorobieff, known as Marevna, and her daughter, Marika, Ilya Ehrenbourg, Chaïm Soutine, Modigliani and his partner, Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, Moïse Kisling, and Léopold Zborowski

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AMEDEO MODIGLIANI: THE INNER EYE

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BIOGRAPHIES OF ARTIST’S MODELS

ANNA AKHMATOVA (Odessa, present-day Ukraine,

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1889 – Domodedovo, Russia, 1966), a Russian-language poet, traveled to Paris with her husband, Nikolay Gumilyov, in spring 1910, and returned to the French capital alone in May 1911. She met Modigliani during her first stay in the city, but “saw him extremely seldom; only a few times.” However, they began to write to each other (the correspondence has been lost), before her second stay, during which they visited the Louvre together and walked in the Luxembourg Gardens. They talked about Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Lautréamont, and Anna Akhmatova published some poems in the Russian literary journal, Apollon. Modigliani drew her from memory in a series of nudes adorned with “African beads,” and sketched her “head in the attire of Egyptian queens and dancers,” like those in the Louvre. In July, Akhmatova returned to Russia, and that winter, she participated in the foundation of “acmeism,” a poetic movement advocating the rejection of symbolism and a return to classical forms. After the Russian Revolution, the group was accused of representing the “literature of the nobility and landowners.” Anna Akhmatova published nothing else for several decades. Between 1958 and 1964, a few years before her death, she wrote down some memories of her friendship with Modigliani.

PAUL ALEXANDRE (1881 – 1968), a dermatologist by training, was a friend and patron to a whole circle of Montmartre artists between 1907 and 1914. Until 1913, he rented a building slated for demolition, 7 Rue du Delta, for a modest sum, to accommodate the sculptor Maurice Drouard and the painter Henri Doucet, among others.

In late 1907, Doucet introduced him to Modigliani, who became a regular visitor to the Rue du Delta and its poetry evenings, “Bal des Quat’z’Arts” dance, and hashish sessions. To support Modigliani, and because he was impressed by his talent, Paul Alexandre commissioned several portraits from the artist, notably one of his father, Jean-Baptiste, and of his brother, Jean (cats. 2 and 3).

Between 1908 and 1914, he saw him almost every day and rescued countless discarded drawings. They visited the Bernheim, Vollard, and Kahnweiler galleries and the Trocadéro museum together. After his mobilization as a medical officer in August 1914, Alexandre lost contact with Modigliani and did not see him again after his return.

P I OTR E DWAR D (known as Pierre-Édouard) Baranowski (Mazyr – after 1929), was a painter, active

in Paris from 1915 at the latest. He exhibited work at the Salon d’Automne (1922, 1924, 1928), at the Salon des Indépendants (1927, 1928), and at the Salon des Tuileries (1924, 1928, 1929). A member of the TAP (Towarzystwo Artystów Polskich w Paryzu – Society of Polish Artists in Paris), he was elected to its visual arts section committee in 1915. He took part in Polish exhibitions in Paris: in 1917, at the Exposition des Artistes Polonais organized by the Société du Secours Fraternel, and he received support from the Caisse de Prêts loan fund during the war; in 1918, he signed a letter of protest against the conditions

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in which the Exposition des Peintres et Sculpteurs Polonais was organized at the Potocki mansion in Paris; in 1920, he participated in the exhibition Quelques Artistes Polonais held by the Association France-Pologne at the Galerie Barbazanges; and in 1922, in the Jeune Pologne exhibition.

He painted flowers, landscapes (including French Landscape, 1918, National Museum, Warsaw), and still lifes. Modigliani painted two portraits of Pierre-Édouard; one is in a private collection, the other in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco (Source: Ewa Bobrowska, “Le milieu des artistes polonais en France 1890-1918.

Communautés et individualités,” PhD thesis, Université Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne, 2001, supervised by Françoise Levaillant, p. 563). According to Hanna Bartnicka-Gorska and Joanna Szczepińska-Tramer in their book W poszukiwaniu światła, kształtu i barw. Artyści polscy wystawiający na Salonach paryskich w latach 18841960 (Neriton: Warsaw, 2005, p. 290), there is evidence that he also stayed on the Riviera, and served as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War. FERNANDE BARREY (Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme, 1893 – Paris, 1960). In the 1910s, Fernande Barrey was an artist’s model in Paris. She enrolled at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and began to paint on the advice of Chaïm Soutine and Modigliani. When Tsuguharu Foujita met her at the Rotonde café in Paris in March 1917, he was smitten, and they married thirteen days later. In April 1918, they fled south to escape the war approaching Paris, and settled in Cagnes-sur-Mer, where they stayed in the house of one “Père Curel” with Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne and her mother, Eudoxie, and Léopold Zborowski and his wife, Hanka. This is probably where Modigiliani painted two portraits of Fernande Barrey (incuding cat. 109).

CONSTANTIN BRANCUSI (Pe ti ani, present-day Romania, 1876 – Paris, 1957) probably met Modigliani in 1908, through Paul Alexandre. At the time he would join the gatherings at 7 Rue du Delta, but worked in Montparnasse. He founded the Cité Falguière studios in Montparnasse, where Modigliani took up residence in 1909. Brancusi, like Maurice Drouard and Jacques Lipchitz, gave technical advice to the young artist, who had received no training in sculpture. In 1907, after a brief stint with Auguste Rodin, Brancusi abandoned clay for the taille directe or direct carving technique on stone.

He was working on the portrait of Baroness Frachon, which became Sleep in 1908 and the Sleeping Muse in 1909.

He was also developing the motif of The Kiss, which he used thirty years later in his monument at Târgu Jiu. During these years, Modigliani and Brancusi shared a desire to break with sculpting muscles—which Brancusi called “steak”—in favor of pure lines and a hieratic style.

They visited the Louvre, where the Cycladic works were of particular interest to the Romanian sculptor.

FRANK BURTY Haviland (Limoges, 1886 – Perpignan, 1971) (cat. 64), grandson of the art critic Philippe Burty

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