From the brilliant pioneer animal painter Paulus Potter to the short and intense star of Amedeo Modigliani, King Death shortened the art of far too many painters.
Modigliani
Modigliani’s tragically early death, the American Benjamin West, who painted almost entirely in England, Raphael, Ingres, and John Singer Sargent. What a year!
One of the most important Serbian artists of the 20th century, he was a friend of Modigliani in Paris, and a prolific painter of views in Serbia.
More paintings of cypresses by Vincent van Gogh, Renoir, Modigliani, and Gustav Klimt.
Modigliani died at 35, his partner two days later at 21; one dealer died at 35, the other at 43. Was this a curse or coincidence?
Unlike some of his contemporaries, his people are real and his depictions full of grace and calm. His stylistic exaggerations and faired forms work to create portraits and nudes which we can really enjoy.
Towards the end of the Great War, he spent a period in Nice, with his partner Jeanne Hébuterne. His only solo exhibition was closed by the police within hours of its opening.
Portraits of Picasso and other artists of the day, two dealers, and the start of his series of nudes painted for Leopold Zborowski.
Soon after his arrival in Paris, in 1906, he switched to sculpture. He had the idea of a ‘temple to humanity’, with hundreds of caryatids to support it.
Look for series covering the life and paintings of Raphael, the Swedish Anders Zorn, Amedeo Modigliani, and articles on others with anniversaries this year.
