News from the Modigliani Initiative

March 19, 2024

Spotlight

Game Changer:

How Galerie Bernheim-Jeune Initiated the Modigliani Craze

Woman in a Sailor Shirt (La femme en blouse marine) [detail], 1916, Oil on canvas, 55 x 35 cm.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York. Bequest of Luisa Toso, 2016 (2016.45)

Modigliani worked with several art dealers, including Paul Guillaume and Léopold Zborowski, and both organized exhibitions that featured the artist’s paintings in the months after his death in January 1920. It was only when Galerie Bernheim-Jeune began buying large numbers of Modigliani’s canvases, however, that the Parisian art market took note. Our latest Spotlight story explores how in late 1920 the venerable gallery began the craze for Modigliani’s paintings, a phenomenon that forever altered the artist’s market. You can read the essay here.

Modigliani Initiative News

CAA Presentation

We are delighted to have participated in the recent CAA (College Art Association) Annual Conference in a session organized for the Catalogue Raisonné Scholars Association. Our presentation, "Modigliani’s Legacy: Beyond the Catalogue Raisonné,” outlined our firm belief that fact-based research and consensus building offer a more viable alternative to the traditional catalogue raisonné as a means to resolve the full extent of Modigliani’s oeuvre. The case studies we presented will be published as essays on our website, including “Game Changer,” the Spotlight story discussed above.

Auction News

In their recent sale of 19th & 20th Century Art, Swann Auction Galleries in New York included a small, pencil drawing of Dr. Dyre Diriks (1894–1976). Along with his wife Marguerite, Diriks, who was a physician and also a painter, befriended Modigliani in Montparnasse, and the artist made several drawings of the couple. More information on the work can be found here.

Exhibition News

For those who like to plan ahead: from November 14, 2024 through March 30, 2025, the Zadkine Museum in Paris will host Modigliani/Zadkine: une amitié interrompue. More details about this exhibition will follow.

Portrait de Zadkine,
c. 1918. Zadkine Museum, Paris

You are invited to share this newsletter with friends and colleagues. We are grateful for your support.

Leslie Koot | Julie Martin | Julia May Boddewyn

Follow us on social media

You can follow the Modigliani Initiative on:
Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and Facebook.