ART: Modigliani's Mode

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By the end of the 17th Century the halcyon art of Italy had completely decayed. From, the death of Michelangelo to the present day, with the exception of a colorful but shallow digression at Venice, good Italian painting has been practically nonexistent. But in 1884, a sickly boy was born in the Ghetto at Leghorn, Tuscany, to Flaminio Modigliani, son of a Roman usurer. The boy was named Amedeo which means "love of God." Under the guidance of his uncle Isaac described by one of his family as "a man of vast and disorderly culture" and a descendant of Philosopher Spinoza, Amedeo grew up, studious, passionate, grave. When he was 14 he had typhoid fever and in his delirium raved about the Renaissance, his longing to become a painter. This was the first indication of his esthetic bent. His mother, impressed, promised that he should go to art school. In 1906 after a few years of study with mediocre landscapists, Modigliani went to Paris where he was described as a "serious looking student who read Dante and lived alone." This solitude was short lived. Paris studios boiled with the revolutionary ideas of the Fauves (Wild Beasts)* and no intelligent young painter could ignore them. Modigliani quickly exhausted his Italian academism, delved into the cubism and Negro sculpture which preoccupied his new friends, Picasso, Matisse, Derain and Braque. He became alcoholic and consumptive, affected voluminous trousers, a gay scarf, a wide-brimmed black hat. He lived in grubby Montparnasse with one Jeanne Hebuterne who bore him a child. He was known as the poorest man in Paris. Meanwhile he painted steadily and achieved a personal style. Most of the 400 canvases he left are portraits.

When the War broke out in 1914 Modigliani coughed too much to be drafted. He stayed all night in the cafes, sketching for drinks, arguing passionately and with great wit. In one of the cafes he met the Polish poet Zborowski who saw that he was dying. Zborowski tried to sell some of Modigliani's canvases. But no one wanted them, so he sold a trunk full of his own clothes and took the painter to Provence for his health. He improved slightly but once back in Paris he drank again, became so undermined that when an unusual cold wave struck in December 1920 he died of influenza with the words "Cara, cara, Italia!'' (Dear, dear Italy) on his lips. A few days later his mistress threw herself from a window. Friends of the painter wired his brother in Italy that he had died a pauper. The reply was: "Bury him as prince." Modigliani was carried to his grave by the celebrities of Paris.

Last week in Manhattan the first one-man show of Modigliani was held. Among the 37 canvases, mostly portraits of his Paris friends, was one of his earliest heads and his last canvas, a large nude. Also shown was his last palette and a death mask taken in the hospital by his friends, the painter Kisling and the sculptor Lipshitz. It reveals a small ascetic face with sunken eyes, a very thin nose.