Biography
Modigliani (1884-1920) is arguably the best known and most popular of all modern Italian painters, yet many cultures influenced his work and he lived the years of his artistic growth and maturity in France.Born in Livorno, Modigliani was a delicate child and almost died of tuberculosis at the age of sixteen. He studied in Florence and Venice, but moved to Paris in 1906 – at that time the epicentre of avant-garde experimentation. Although energised by the city's vibrant artistic circles, he eschewed Fauvism, Cubism and other artistic trends being explored by his contemporaries, single-mindedly pursuing his own ideal of timeless beauty.Modigliani drew upon a wide range of influences, absorbing those elements that accorded with his own character and aesthetic sensibility: the mesmerising quality of Egyptian art, the purity and majesty of Greek sculpture, the gentle humour of the Etruscans, and the naturalism of African masks. His distinctive style emerged fully formed around 1915, and is characterised by elongated figures with almond-shaped eyes and sinuous lines.
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