Amedeo Modigliani, Italian Artist, 1884-1920: A Reexamination Through New Archival Resources

FAIN: FB-53498-08

June Meryle Beveridge
Unaffiliated Independent Scholar (Washington, DC 20016)

Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian painter and sculptor, is one of the most important artists of the 20th century, a major figure in the School of Paris, along with Picasso, Matisse, Derain, Utrillo, Brancusi, Soutine and others. Yet Modigliani is probably the most maligned and misunderstood figure in this distinguished company, in study after study since his death in 1920. Portrayed by early biographers as a shambling alcoholic whose work was ridiculed or ignored, the image took hold, and "Modi" was "maudit," i.e. accursed, a disappointed man who burned himself up with drink and drugs and died at the premature age of thirty-five. All this has been changing in the last decade or so. Scholarly research has shed new light on the artist's growing reputation during his lifetime, archives once unknown are coming to light and new documentation, photographs, drawings, paintings and family letters are making a more complete and nuanced view of Modigliani possible for the first time.