Spotlight

The Modigliani Initiative website has a Spotlight section which features short essays about the overlooked individuals in Modigliani’s circle: his models, collectors, friends, and lesser-known art dealers. The latest story, The Peasant Girl of Carlyle Square, examines the evidence in an attempt to identify the painting that doomed the Sitwell brothers’ deal to purchase Léopold Zborowski’s entire Modigliani holdings. Discover this intriguing story here.

Image: La Belle Épicière, 1918. Private collection

Upcoming Event

Curators in Conversation: Modigliani Up Close

On Sunday, October 16th at 1pm ET, the Barnes will present an online talk by the co-curators of the exhibition Modigliani Up Close. Click here for more information. The exhibition will take place at the Barnes in Philadelphia from October 16 through January 29, 2023, and will examine the artist’s working methods and materials. Building on research that began in the context of a major Modigliani retrospective at Tate Modern in 2017, this exhibition examines 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.

Image: Boy in Short Pants, c. 1918. Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Leland Fikes Foundation, Inc. Image courtesy Dallas Museum of Art

Upcoming Event

Amedeo Modigliani

Opening in November 2023, the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in Germany will present an exhibition of approximately 100 paintings and works on paper by Modigliani which will be shown alongside works by Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele and Wilhelm Lehmbruck. The exhibition is being organized in cooperation with the Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany, where the show will travel in April 2024. Click here for more information.

Image: Portrait of Chaim Soutine, 1915. Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany

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During our recent research trip in Paris, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the Centre Pompidou was given three drawings by Modigliani all depicting his good friend, the artist Charles “Orry” Barclay de Tholey (1891–1917). De Tholey was known for his woodcuts and his work was included in the prestigious Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon in Berlin in 1913, alongside those by Vassily Kandinsky, Gino Severini, Jean Arp, and Julio Ortiz de Zárate. He voluntarily enlisted in the army in August 1914 and was depicted in this drawing wearing his uniform with the collar insignia “74,” indicating his unit. The following year he was promoted to sergeant and awarded the Médaille militaire, the highest French military distinction for non-commissioned officers and soldiers. Shortly after obtaining his pilot’s brevet he died in an aviation accident in November 1917. While his life and promising art career were tragically cut short, de Tholey is immortalized through Modigliani’s sensitive and empathetic portraits.

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Image: Portrait d’homme (Charles Barclay de Tholey), 1915–16. Centre Pompidou, Paris.