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On this day in
1832 was born Paul Gustave Doré, French artist, engraver, and illustrator.
1872 Russian pianist and composer Alexander Nikolayevich Scriabin was born
1993 died Rudolf Nureyev , one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century
2004 died Francesco Scavullo, American photographer best known for his celebrity portraits. |
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Exhibition in Madrid: Modigliani and his time
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| Wednesday, February 6, 2008 |
The exhibition Modigliani y su tiempo (Modigliani and his time) is the next joint project to be organised by the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and Fundación Caja Madrid. It brings together around 130 works with the intention of analysing the career of one of the great figures of 20th-century art, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), from the time of his arrival in Paris in 1906 until his death. The most innovative element of the present exhibition is the fact that for the first time it will present Modigliani’s works in the form of a dialogue with works by the great masters who influenced him, namely Cézanne, Picasso and Brancusi, as well as with the work of his fellow artists and friends in Montparnasse. The latter include Marc Chagall, Chaďm Soutine, Moďse Kisling, Ossip Zadkine, Tsuguharu Foujita and Jules Pascin.
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Amedeo Modigliani Autoretrato 1919 öleo sobre lienzo 100 x 64,5 cm Museo de Arte Contemporanea da Universidade di Sao Paulo |
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Modigliani was an artist open to the ideas of the principal Parisian avant-garde movements prior to World War I. At the same time, however, he always remained apart from these movements. To see his work alongside that of the avant-garde painters – both leading names in the history of art as well as other, less well known or forgotten figures who were also protagonists of the early 20th-century European art scene – allows for a correct appreciation. His unmistakeable portraits, nudes, sculptures, drawings and even landscapes, exhibited alongside carefully selected examples by artists such as Gauguin, Cézanne, Picasso, Brancusi and Derain will reveal not only influences, similarities and parallels. They will also present Modigliani’s work in a new light, set within the context in which it was created and revealing its forceful, sophisticated and elegant character, the result of a synthesis of sources as varied as African and archaic Greek sculpture, Cubism and Fauvism, Sienese Trecento painting and the work of El Greco.
Amedeo Modigliani Cariátide 1913 Grafito, tinta y pastel 53 x 43,8 cm Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris |
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The exhibition is organised into two principal sections. The first examines Modigliani’s relationship with his masters, whose work can be seen in the rooms of the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, while the second looks at his artistic relationships with fellow-artists and friends, whose work is shown at Fundación Caja Madrid.
Museo Thyssen Bornemisza
The major retrospectives A year after his arrival in Paris, Modigliani exhibited seven of his works at the 1907 Salon d’Automne at the Grand Palais. The major retrospectives in Paris at that time, such as the ones on Gauguin (1906) and Cézanne (1907), also at the Salon d’Automne, and the ones on Toulouse-Lautrec (1908) and Cézanne (1910) at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, had a key influence on the young Modigliani’s artistic development. He was also influenced by the early work of Picasso, which he would have encountered on his visits to the galleries of Ambroise Vollard and Clovis Sagot.
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Amedeo Modigliani Cabeza 1911- 1912 Piedra Caliza 89,2 x 14 x 35,2 cm Tate |
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Reading sculpture From the time of his arrival in Paris, Modigliani wanted to be a sculptor: he himself told his friends on more than one occasion that his commitment to painting was of a merely “alimentary” kind, supporting him while he worked on developing his true vocation. Modigliani’s dedication to sculpture derived from his encounter with the work of Constantin Brancusi who encouraged him to carve directly in stone, leaving behind the vestiges of late Romanticism evident in his early work. While his experiments with sculpture were short-lived, the connections that Modigliani established with Brancusi and André Derain would influence all his later work.
Portraits I The tuberculosis from which Modigliani suffered prevented him from continuing as a sculptor. At this point he worked on freeing his palette following the example of artists such as Derain and Picasso. From 1915 he focused on portraiture as his principal means of support and as a way of making contact with the multi-cultural community in Montparnasse. While his portraits still reveal a certain proximity to Cubism – the movement with which Modigliani was associated on more than one occasion following his participation in the Cubist Room at the Salon d’Automne in 1912 – the works he executed in this genre from 1915-1916 are markedly independent and influenced by his own experience as a sculptor. Located mid-way between this period and his fully mature phase are the notable portraits of Anna Zborowska, the wife of Modigliani’s friend and dealer Léopold Zborowski.
Nudes I Modigliani’s large nudes date from 1916-1917 and were painted in Zborowski’s apartment on rue Joseph Bara. Through these works Modigliani associated himself with the great tradition of the reclining nude initiated by Giorgione in the 16th century but still maintained a completely modern artistic idiom. This is evident in the way that he flattened the female figures, his use of an unusually close-up viewpoint of an almost photographic type, and his emphasis on line as an expressive element. The combination of all these elements has made Modigliani’s reclining nudes no less than icons of modern art.
FUNDACIÓN CAJA MADRID
Portraits II Between 1917 and 1918 Modigliani painted friends and patrons, creating a gallery of portraits of Montparnasse in the second decade of the century. During his stay in Nice from 1918 to 1919 he also painted country people and young workers, conferring great dignity on these sitters. Some of the artists depicted by Modigliani in the last years of his life also focused largely on portraiture, particularly Moďse Kisling, Chaďm Soutine and Jules Pascin.
Amedeo Modigliani Desnudo 1917 Oleo sobre lienzo 73 x 116cm Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum New York |
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Nudes II Following the example of Botticelli, Modigliani painted various standing nudes. Other Montparnasse artists shared his interest in the motif of the nude, including Kees van Dongen, Marc Chagall, Moďse Kisling, Tsuguharu Foujita, Jules Pascin, Suzanne Valadon, Wilhelm Lehmbruck, Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine and Chana Orloff.
Landscapes During his time in Nice from 1918 to 1919 and due to the scarcity of live models, Modigliani painted various landscapes. These are architectural works in the manner of Cézanne, Braque and Derain but they are imbued with a new sense of melancholy. Although Modigliani painted few landscapes the genre was of great importance for some of his fellow artists such as Marc Chagall, Chaďm Soutine, Maurice Utrillo, Manuel Ortiz de Zárate and Léopold Survage.
Drawing Drawing was a constant field of experimentation for Modigliani and underlies many of his pictorial achievements. This room presents drawings of friends and acquaintances such as Ossip Zadkine, exhibited in a dialogue with sculptures by Zadkine himself and by Henri Laurens.
Documentary images The exhibition ends with a room devoted to photographs of Modigliani and his circle with the intention of offering visitors further insight into the figure of the Italian artist.
Further Information
Modigliani y su tiempo |
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