Online lecture by Dr. Annie Cohen-Solal (academic and writer)
1st "Modern Art in Jewish Contexts" lecture organized by the Institute of Jewish Studies (University of Antwerp) and Friends of the M HKA
24 February 2021
Although Modigliani (1884-1920) lived a short life, he quickly became the most famous modernist Italian painter, with his portraits reaching astronomic sums in auction sales. But the myth of Modigliani being a “peintre maudit” (cursed painter) – a image of Modigliani which was constructed after his death and which focused on the excesses of bohemian life (alcohol, hashish, etc.) – tended to erase the extraordinary complexity of his work. Moreover, Modigliani’s work and trajectory have never been approached from the angle of his status as a Jewish Italian expatriate in Paris. He arrived there in 1906, and associated with most of those who had gathered from across Europe and the United States during the heroic “years of renewal that took on the nature of a spiritual and aesthetic revival.” In Paris, Modigliani did not join any of the organized groups (Fauves, Futurists, Cubists), and remained ferociously independent on the aesthetic front. He formed notable bonds with individual artists (Picasso, Brancusi, Matisse, Soutine, Kisling) and poets (Beatrice Hastings, Anna Akhmatova), though only on a one-to-one basis. If exile indeed shaped the art world, Modigliani, from his enlightened Livornese background, brought a unique sense of “prophetic multiculturalism” into his portraits, which also carried a visionary perception of a Europe that was falling apart.
