Spotlight

The Modigliani Initiative website features a section called Spotlight with short essays about the overlooked individuals in Modigliani’s circle: his models, collectors, friends, and lesser-known art dealers. Our inaugural post recounts the story of Osbert and Sacheverell Sitwell, the aristocratic English brothers, who were offered nearly the entire Modigliani holdings of Léopold Zborowski, the artist’s Parisian dealer, during the artist’s lifetime. Discover this remarkable story here.

Les Secrets de Modigliani

In 2018, the Lille Modern Art Museum (LaM), in collaboration with the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2RMF), embarked on a research project involving 25 paintings and 3 sculptures by Modigliani, all from French public collections. Materials, working methods, and the network of professionals that the artist associated with were examined, culminating in the 2021 exhibition Les Secrets de Modigliani. The fascinating results of the study are now published in a catalogue (in French and English). For more information on the publication, click here. A short overview (in French) of the exhibition and publication by LaM curator Marie-Amélie Senot can be accessed here.

Image: © N. Dewitte / LaM, 2022.

Pow! Right in the Eye!

Berthe Weill, who opened her gallery in Paris in 1901, was the first female art dealer and the only one to give Modigliani a solo exhibition during his lifetime. Her colorful memoir, published in French in 1933, has now been translated into English and offers a lively account of the Paris art scene at the turn of the twentieth century. Edited by Lynn Gumpert, introduction by Marianne Le Morvan, Founder of the Berthe Weill Archives, and with a foreword by Julie Saul and Lynn Gumpert. Find out more about the University of Chicago Press publication here.

Image: © University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Modigliani Up Close

From October 16, 2022, through January 29, 2023, the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia will present Modigliani Up Close, an exhibition that examines the artist’s working methods and materials. Building on research that began in the context of a major Modigliani retrospective at Tate Modern in in 2017, this exhibition takes a close look at how Modigliani created his works and developed his unique style. The Barnes is rich in Modigliani works since Dr. Barnes was an early collector who remarkably acquired a dozen paintings and one sculpture within a few years of the artist’s death in 1920. For more information about the exhibition, click here.

Image: Amedeo Modigliani. Jeanne Hébuterne, 1919. Barnes Collection.