Amedeo Modigliani

1884-1920

Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was an Italian painter, sculptor, and draughtsman who became one of the defining figures of the École de Paris. Born in Livorno into a Sephardic Jewish family, he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance in Italy before settling in Paris in 1906, where he mixed with Picasso, Brâncuși, and the wider avant-garde. Between roughly 1909 and 1914 he worked mainly as a sculptor, carving elongated stone heads before returning to painting, exhibiting stylised works alongside the Cubists at the Salon d'Automne. He is best known for portraits and nudes marked by a distinctive elongation of faces, necks, and figures, a mannered, linear style unlike anything else in early modern art. Chronic illness, poverty, and a difficult bohemian life in Montparnasse shadowed his career; he found little recognition before his death from tubercular meningitis in Paris at thirty-five. His work is now held in major collections worldwide, including the Metropolitan Museum, MoMA, the Pompidou, and the Alte Nationalgalerie, and he is remembered as one of the most instantly recognisable painters of modern art.