Today, his works are worth millions and passionate collectors are fighting for them at rare auctions. All this is a bit ironic because, during his lifetime, Amadeo Modigliani tasted only a part of this glory, only to die in complete misery and poverty. A tuberculous alcoholic, addicted to women, hashish and ether, unrecognized, poor and dead as early as thirty-six, with the last painting dried on an easel: Amedeo Modigliani, born July 12, 1884, was a romantic exception in the increasingly abstract art of the 20th century. He is considered one of the most important Italian painters of the 20th century. His style is recognizable by the eroticism and portraits of women with elongated faces and figures.
Unshaven, thick, black, messy hair, in a dirty jacket and with nails yellowed by nicotine and oil paints, he was the epitome of a Parisian artist who could barely make ends meet.
Modigliani was born in 1884 in Livorno, to a Jewish family. His painting talent was recognized when he was a child, but as the father opposed his son becoming a painter, he probably would never have developed his gift if it were not for the mother who supported him and the fact that he was very ill.
In 1898, Modigliani fell ill with typhus. After his recovery, he was allowed to leave school and attend drawing and painting classes at the Livorno Academy of Arts.
In the "city of light", Modigliani began to associate with other painters, poor poets, vagrants and vagabonds, and soon he himself adopted such a way of life, beginning to despise the Parisian gentlemen and the "false splendor" of the bourgeoisie. Until the First World War, Modigliani mainly made stone sculptures inspired by African art. Sometime around 1914, he stopped sculpting and started painting in an expressionist style - his face and neck are elongated, the lines are finely bent, the pupils of the eyes are often not visible, the lips are small ...
In 1916, he began a large series of extremely erotic acts, by which he will become the most recognizable. He often gave them as gifts in exchange for food. He preferred to stay in bars and taverns in the bohemian district of Montparnasse, where he drank his favorite drink, absinthe, until he spent all his money.
After that, he squandered his talent in order to earn a few more glasses of drink, which dragged him into addiction. Sometime around this time, the painter probably had the first traces of tuberculosis, but he covered it up with alcohol, opiates and drugs, so he attributes the increasingly frequent attacks of coughing and exhaustion to his vicious life, not illness. He drank absinthe the most, and of the narcotics he adored hashish. He knew how to spend several weeks in a row in the fog created by these two substances.
In his world of alcoholics, unrecognized and poor artists and street people, he was called the "prince of vagabond".
In 1917, the painter met the nineteen-year-old artist Jean Ebutern, with whom he began to live and who became one of his main models. He painted it more than 25 times. Mutual love erupted almost immediately and she became the most painted model. However, Jean Ebutren's parents strongly opposed this connection. As exemplary Catholics, they could not come to terms with the fact that their daughter's chosen one was a Jew. Despite their opposition, she decides to move in with her chosen one.
On December 3 of 1917 year, Modigliani had a solo exhibition for the first and last time in his life. He exhibited his series of nudes in the Bert Vale gallery in Paris, and the scene was so shocking that the police intervened and ordered the canvases to be removed.
He died without money, but he left an eternal and precious legacy of extraordinary paintings that later founded him as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. He lost the fight against tuberculosis in 1920 at the age of 35. In addition to the phenomenal pictures, he also left his beautiful fiancée Jean Ebutern, who immediately committed suicide when she heard about his death. She jumped from the window of the apartment located on the 5th floor, killing herself and the child she was carrying in her womb.
Too bad ... this is not the only biography of an artist who died in total misery and poverty and at the same time ill. It's not fair that their late arrival popularity. Sadness