Modigliani retrospective pulls in crowds in Germany (Feature)

By Clive Freeman Jun 14, 2009, 2:08 GMT

   Bonn, Germany - When Amadeo Modigliani painted a series of reclining nudes in Paris early in the early 20th century and had them displayed in a city gallery, police considered them obscene and ordered the exhibition closed.

   Modigliani's nudes were inspired by the famous Venuses of Titian, but unlike his Renaissance compatriot, he had endowed them with a bold seductiveness and sensuous beauty considered altogether too shocking for straight-laced Parisians during World War 1.

   Now, almost a century later, 40 paintings, 70 drawings and two sculptures from the artist's prolific but sadly short career are on show at the Art and Exhibition Hall in Bonn, some for the first time in 20 years.

Born in 1884 in the Tuscan port of Liverno as the son of a wealthy middle class Italian Jewish family, Modigliani was 21 when he arrived in Paris and became embroiled in the wild artist scene of Picasso, Brancusi, Gris and Cocteau.

   During this early period in France, he dabbled in sculpturing and evolved his highly original style of distorted forms inspired by the medieval art of his native Italy and the primitive idols of African sculpture.

   His tousled hair, loose silk scarf, melancholic eyes and poetic face all made up the classic image of a creative man.

   It was in 1917 that Modigliani created a public furor with his nude paintings, portraying his models in an extraordinary way, with unusually long necks, apricot coloured skins, small red mouths and almond-shaped eyes, sometimes dark, sometimes transparent blue.

The results scandalised the city authorities. Not until years later would the art world slowly warm to his work, finding in their rhythmical lines and earthy tones the elegance and beauty of great art.

   In his early years in Paris, Modigliani found himself strapped for money to buy food and materials, forcing him to move from one lodging to another.

   He turned to liquor and drugs to bolster his spirits and shut out his feelings of failure. In order to pay for these excursions into 'artificial paradise' as he put it, he would saunter from one cafe to another peddling his drawings for as little as five francs.

   For the dozen or so years he remained in the French capital, fellow artists, dealers, poets, and waitresses - all habitues of Montmartre and Montparnasse - were pressed into service as his models.

   From Modigliani's limited sculptural work, two superb female heads, made of sandstone, are to be seen at the Bonn exhibition, which runs until the end of August.

   Modigliani suffered from tuberculosis from childhood, and his condition worsened due to alcohol abuse and drug excesses during a period when he was involved in tempestuous affairs with women.

   One of his love affairs was with the British poet Beatrice Hastings whom he met in 1914. For two years he lived in her small cottage in Montparnasse, painting her portrait ten times and drawing her endlessly.

   His art at this time became more sure, but his life with Hastings soured, and after a succession of rows in her hollyhock garden he left her. Early on she had branded him 'a pig and a pearl, full of brandy and hashish.'

   Later in the south of France, Modigliani met Jeanne Hebuterne a slim, 19-year-old art student. They became inseparable and the artist's friends hoped she would bring health and order back into his life.

   She bore him a child and became engaged, but later when she was expecting a second child, Modigliani suffered a renewed outbreak of tuberculosis, dying in 1920 aged 35. Distraught and in an advanced state of pregnancy Jeanne threw herself out of the window of her parent's house next day.

   Modigliani's life had been a desperate tale of poverty, ill health, tormented love, and at times debauchery and rejection. But artistically, he was hugely talented, as the Bonn exhibition amply testifies.