Modigliani

To mark the 100th anniversary of the death of Amedeo Modigliani (18841920), a new publication by the renowned art historian David Franklin examines the signicant and idiosyncratic artist from Livorno (Italy). Based on a select group of exceptional works in sculpture and painting, the book gets up close to Modigliani's unique artistic outlook and accords in-depth insights into his painting technique. Presented in English and German.

Today Modigliani is world famous for the style of his portraiture and female nudes, for the long necks and almond-shaped eyes of his gures. Yet even though he was by no means as incongruous with the public during his lifetime as romanticised historical writings occasionally purport, his style of modernism was that of a maverick swimming against the current.

At the core of David Franklin's analysis is the conviction that Modigliani was neither an artist of the established mainstream nor one who entirely belonged to an avant-garde in pursuit of innovation and constant stylistic renewal. Rather, as is demonstrated, he consciously situated himself as an outsider during his Paris years, one who deed categorisation.

That does not mean, however, that his art, which he produced contemporaneously with Cubism and Futurism, was any less modern. Modigliani was fully aware of the prevailing artistic currents of his time, and he did not ignore Cubism so much as decisively reject it.

At a time when the most diverse of styles were superseding one another, Modigliani stubbornly pursued a direction all of his own. As David Franklin points out, the artist, who died from tuberculous meningitis at the age of thirty- ve, thus made a unique contribution during his mature phase as a painter to the exploration of human existence.

The Canadian expert in Italian art expands on the distinctive features of Modigliani's oeuvre in the form of twenty- ve analyses of works and in doing so focuses in particular on four central points: that Modigliani fostered an unusually comprehensive and erudite respect for the past; that he worked in complete awareness of his illness and his inescapable early fate; that his experience as a sculptor had a lasting inuence on his painting; and that he developed a novel, wholly personal technique for immortalising the transient moment.