Happy Holidays from The Modigliani Initiative!

December 19, 2023

The Year in Review

Jeanne Hébuterne, 1919.
Ohara Museum, Kurashiki, Japan

Exhibitions

2023 was a big year for Modigliani. Three exhibitions examining different aspects of the artist’s life and artwork were held at the Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia: Modigliani: Up Close; musée de l’Orangerie, Paris: Modigliani: An Artist and his Dealer; and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (recently opened): Modigliani: Modern Gazes. Each accompanying catalogue furthers the scholarship on the artist’s working methods; his key relationship with Paul Guillaume, one of his first art dealers; and reconsiders his portraits of the modern woman, respectively. Shining a much-needed light on the complicated legacy of Amedeo Modigliani aligns with the mission of The Modigliani Initiative where we take a fact-based and transparent approach to studying the artist’s life and work.

Spotlight Stories

This fall we published two new stories in the Spotlight section of our website. In case you missed them, we invite you to follow the links provided below:

Modigliani in 1916: At the Center of the Avant-garde.
Modigliani’s inclusion in “Première Exposition,” the 1916 happening of art, music, and poetry held in the Paris studio known as Lyre et Palette, proved to be a career-changing event for Modigliani. The essay attempts to reconstruct the show, newly identifying Madame Kisling as one of the works likely shown. Read the full story here.

Madame Kisling, 1916. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

Fernand Thibaut and Amedeo Modigliani: An Unexamined Friendship.
A portrait, titled A Man, likely depicts the Belgian artist Fernand Thibaut, who was Modigliani’s neighbor at Cité Falguière in Paris. See how provenance research made it possible to connect the artist to his forgotten subject and friend. Here is the link.

A Man, 1916.
Detroit Institute of Arts. Bequest of Robert H. Tannahill, 70.186.

Our Mission

It has been an exciting year for The Modigliani Initiative, which was founded to support the artistic legacy of Amedeo Modigliani. Our ongoing research has garnered important new data from auction and exhibition catalogues and reviews, archival records, literature and memoirs, which has been invaluable in unraveling the provenance of a number of Modigliani’s works. Our digital database serves as a highly-searchable repository of our findings, many of which we have already shared with museums and fellow scholars, in advance of the database’s publication online. Follow us on social media for updates about our discoveries: Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Please help us spread the word about The Modigliani Initiative. We are grateful for your support and extend our best wishes for the new year.

Leslie Koot | Julie Martin | Julia May Boddewyn

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