Amedeo Modigliani [1884 – 1920]

Italian Jewish painter and sculptor

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani

was born,

July 12, 1884,

into a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno, Italy.

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A painter very dear to me, Modigliani is known for his portraits and nudes with elongated faces and bodies and the ‘blank’ eyes. His own words about the eyes give a perspective of those ‘blank eyes’:

“With one eye you are looking at the outside world, while with the other you are looking within yourself.”

His favorite subject was by far the human form. Modigliani spent his youth in Italy, where he studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. In 1906 he moved to Paris, where he came into contact with artists such as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brâncuși. By 1912 Modigliani was exhibiting highly stylized sculptures with Cubists of the Section d’Or group at the Salon d’Automne.From 1909 to 1914 he devoted himself…