60 Facts About Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor of the Ecole de Paris who worked mainly in France.

Amedeo Modigliani had little success while alive but after his death achieved great popularity.

Amedeo Modigliani died of tubercular meningitis, at the age of 35, in Paris.

Amedeo Modigliani was born into a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, Italy.

Amedeo Modigliani's mother, Eugenie Garsin, born and raised in Marseille, was descended from an intellectual, scholarly family of Sephardic ancestry that for generations had lived along the Mediterranean coastline.

Amedeo Modigliani's father, Flaminio, was a member of an Italian Jewish family of successful businessmen and entrepreneurs.

Amedeo Modigliani managed the mine in Sardinia and managed the almost 30,000 acres of timberland the family owned.

Ever resourceful, Amedeo Modigliani's mother used her social contacts to establish a school and, along with her two sisters, made the school into a successful enterprise.

Amedeo Modigliani was the fourth child, whose birth coincided with the disastrous financial collapse of his father's business interests.

Amedeo Modigliani's birth saved the family from ruin; according to an ancient law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child.

Amedeo Modigliani had a close relationship with his mother, who taught him at home until he was 10.

Amedeo Modigliani's mother was, in many ways, instrumental in his ability to pursue art as a vocation.

Amedeo Modigliani behaves like a spoiled child, but he does not lack intelligence.

Amedeo Modigliani is known to have drawn and painted from a very early age, and thought himself "already a painter", his mother wrote, even before beginning formal studies.

Amedeo Modigliani's mother promised that she would take him to Florence herself, the moment he was recovered.

Amedeo Modigliani worked in Micheli's Art School from 1898 to 1900.

Amedeo Modigliani showed great promise while with Micheli, and ceased his studies only when he was forced to, by the onset of tuberculosis.

In 1901, whilst in Rome, Amedeo Modigliani admired the work of Domenico Morelli, a painter of dramatic religious and literary scenes.

Micheli's work was so fashionable and the genre so commonplace that the young Amedeo Modigliani reacted against it, preferring to ignore the obsession with landscape that, as with French Impressionism, characterized the movement.

In 1902, Amedeo Modigliani continued what was to be a lifelong infatuation with life drawing, enrolling in the Scuola Libera di Nudo, or "Free School of Nude Studies", of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.

The poetry of Lautreamont is characterized by the juxtaposition of fantastical elements, and by sadistic imagery; the fact that Amedeo Modigliani was so taken by this text in his early teens gives a good indication of his developing tastes.

Amedeo Modigliani wrote to Ghiglia extensively from Capri, where his mother had taken him to assist in his recovery from tuberculosis.

In 1906, Amedeo Modigliani moved to Paris, then the focal point of the avant-garde.

Amedeo Modigliani later befriended Jacob Epstein, with whom he aimed to set up a studio or Temple of Beauty to be enjoyed by all.

Amedeo Modigliani himself intended to create the drawings and paintings of the stone caryatids for 'The Pillars of Tenderness' which would support the imagined temple.

Amedeo Modigliani squatted in the Bateau-Lavoir, a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre, renting himself a studio in Rue Caulaincourt.

Amedeo Modigliani soon made efforts to assume the guise of the bohemian artist, but, even in his brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat, he has appeared as if he were slumming it, having fallen upon harder times.

Amedeo Modigliani transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds.

Amedeo Modigliani was already an alcoholic and a drug addict by this time, and his studio reflected this.

Amedeo Modigliani thrived on camaraderie and would not let himself be isolated as an invalid; he used drink and drugs as palliatives to ease his physical pain, helping him to maintain a facade of vitality and allowing him to continue to create his art.

Amedeo Modigliani sought the company of artists such as Utrillo and Soutine, seeking acceptance and validation for his work from his colleagues.

Amedeo Modigliani's behavior stood out even in these Bohemian surroundings: he carried on frequent affairs, drank heavily, and used absinthe and hashish.

Amedeo Modigliani became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well known as that of Vincent van Gogh.

Some art historians suggest that it is entirely possible that Amedeo Modigliani would have achieved even greater artistic heights had he not been immured in, and destroyed by, his own self-indulgences.

Amedeo Modigliani was constantly sketching, making as many as a hundred drawings a day.

Amedeo Modigliani was first influenced by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, but around 1907 he became fascinated with the work of Paul Cezanne.

Amedeo Modigliani met the first serious love of his life, Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, in 1910, when he was 26.

In 1909, Amedeo Modigliani returned home to Livorno, sickly and tired from his wild lifestyle.

Amedeo Modigliani originally saw himself as a sculptor rather than a painter, and was encouraged to continue after Paul Guillaume, an ambitious young art dealer, took an interest in his work and introduced him to sculptor Constantin Brancusi.

Amedeo Modigliani painted a series of portraits of contemporary artists and friends in Montparnasse: Chaim Soutine, Moise Kisling, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Marie "Marevna" Vorobyev-Stebeslka, Juan Gris, Max Jacob, Jacques Lipchitz, Blaise Cendrars, and Jean Cocteau, all sat for stylized renditions.

Amedeo Modigliani painted Soutine's portrait several times, when they lived together in the Cite Falguiere around 1916.

At the outset of World War I, Amedeo Modigliani tried to enlist in the army but was refused because of his poor health.

Amedeo Modigliani stayed with him for almost two years, was the subject of several of his portraits, including Madame Pompadour, and the object of much of his drunken wrath.

In 1916, Amedeo Modigliani befriended the Polish poet and art dealer Leopold Zborowski and his wife Anna.

The several dozen nudes Amedeo Modigliani painted between 1916 and 1919 constitute many of his best-known works.

Nu couche realized $170,405,000 at a Christie's, New York, sale on 9 November 2015, a record for a Amedeo Modigliani painting and placing it high among the most expensive paintings ever sold.

Amedeo Modigliani managed to sell a few pictures, but only for a few francs each.

Amedeo Modigliani ended his relationship with the English poet and art critic Beatrice Hastings.

Amedeo Modigliani was known to be abusive towards his lovers, Hebuterne was suffering from depression after becoming pregnant for the second time.

Towards the end of the First World War, early in 1918, Amedeo Modigliani left Paris with Hebuterne to escape from the war and travelled to Nice and Cagnes-sur-Mer.

Amedeo Modigliani already had a son from his relationship with Simone Thiroux, Gerard Thiroux, and at least two other extramarital children.

Amedeo Modigliani then got engaged to her, but Jeanne's parents were against the marriage, especially because of Amedeo Modigliani's reputation as an alcoholic and drug user.

The wedding plans were shattered independently of Jeanne's parents' resistance when Amedeo Modigliani discovered he had a severe form of tuberculosis.

Amedeo Modigliani died on 24 January 1920, at the Hopital de la Charite.

Amedeo Modigliani's epitaph reads: "Struck down by death at the moment of glory".

The Amedeo Modigliani estate is one of the most problematic in the art world.

The Amedeo Modigliani Project, headed by Dr Kenneth Wayne, was founded in 2012 to aid in the researching of Amedeo Modigliani artworks.

Amedeo Modigliani is one of the most faked artists in the world.

In 1984, students carved three stone heads in a Amedeo Modigliani style, causing a sensation when they were "discovered" in a canal in Livorno, Italy.

In February 2025, it was announced that The Curse of Amedeo Modigliani will be released in summer 2025.