Woman in Yellow Jacket (The Amazon)
Modigliani, 1909
Oil on canvas, 92 x 65 cm, Private Collection
Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne
Modigliani, 1919
Oil on canvas, 55 x 38 cm, Private Collection
Today I bought the Modigliani book by Doris Krystof, published by Taschen, who produce some of the best art history books available. About a year ago, I watched the Modigliani film and although the filmmakers had taken great liberties with the storyline of his life, they provided me with a fresh take of his artwork. I had seen his paintings over and over again in art history books, but never really paid them much attention or studied them closely. Now, Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne is one of my favourite portraits to have ever been painted. Modigliani's strong use of line and flattened forms hint at a 'primitive' or ancient tribal artform, with a calm beauty in the simplicity of the mask-like faces. His own personal life, however, was tragic.
Amadeo Clemente Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italia, but lived most of his adult life in Paris, France. It was here in France that Modigliani quickly began to descend into alcoholism, drug-use, and womanizing. He produced many works, but most have not survived his destruction of them, his losing of them when moving, or his gifting of them to girlfriends. He began an affair with Jeanne Hébuterne, an artist in her own right, of whom he famously made many portraits. They had a daughter, and she was expecting their second when Modigliani's tuberculosis and atrocious lifestyle finally caught up with him, dying at the age of thirty-five. Hébuterne was distraught, and the day after his death, she threw herself out of a fifth-storey window, killing both herself and her unborn child. She was only twenty-one. Modigliani and Hébuterne's orphaned daughter was sent to her aunt in Firenze, Italia, but as a child she knew nothing of her parents; it was not until she was older that she began to research their lives and wrote a biography of her father.
