One of the most important - and at the beginnings of his career controversial - figures of 20th century art was Amedeo Modigliani (1884 - 1920), a brilliant artist, profoundly original, who used a personal and sensual style to create his easily recognisable compositions.
The Museum Thyssen-Bornemisza will be hosting next year, starting on February 2, an exhibition dedicated to Modigliani and the role that he played in the Parisian avant-garde before the beginning of World War I. The curators will try to present the major aspects of the painter's career, starting from the time that he arrived in Paris, in 1906, ready to discover the fascinating world of modern French painting, to his tragic and untimelly death. What is surely different about this exhibition is the fact that the organisers will try not only to show the best of Modigliani's works, but also the "dialogue" that existed between his manner and those of the artists that influenced him. These were great masters, such as Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso or Constantin Brancusi, and also fellow-artists and friends of Modigliani, from the complicated and full of life Montparnasse, including painters like March Chagall or Chaim Soutine.
Being a prolific artist, yet tortured by his own demons and vices, Amedeo Modigliani managed to become one of the most popular artistic voices of French art, although at first his strange compositions, mostly nudes of his female companions, weren't very well regarded by the public.
2007-07-06
