“In his drawings there is invention, simplification and purification of form. This is why African art appealed to him. Modigliani had reconstructed the lines of the human face in his own way fitting them into primitive patterns. He enjoyed any attempt to simplify line and was interested in it for his personal development”
Rendered in crisp, minimalist lines, Amedeo Modigliani’s Tête de femme is an exquisite example of the artist’s continual pursuit of stripping art down to its most elemental form. Executed circa 1910-11, the present work dates to a pivotal period during which Modigliani increasingly embraced sculpture and reflects his profound fascination with the ancient cultures of Egypt, West Africa and the Khmer Empire.
Between 1910 and 1913, Modigliani devoted himself almost exclusively to stone sculpture, creating numerous studies of sculpted heads and caryatid motifs. Through these drawings and sculptures, he refined his distinctive style by simplifying facial features such as the slender nose, elongated neck, and almond-shaped eyes seen in the present work. This uniquely Modigliani style achieved an archaic quality by synthesising diverse influences, including Greek and Egyptian sculpture alongside Khmer, Indian, and African tribal art.

While living in Paris, Modigliani frequently visited historical museums, where he was awestruck by archaeological heads and tribal masks that profoundly shaped his artistic vocabulary. In The Unknown Modigliani, Paul Alexandre recounts how Modigliani once took him to the Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro—the city’s first anthropological museum—where he was particularly fascinated by the Angkor exhibition in the west wing (ibid., p. 67). Modigliani also spent hours studying the Egyptian displays at the Louvre, and the aesthetics of Cycladic, Cretan, and Etruscan antiquity are evident throughout his œuvre, as he endeavoured to simulate their simplicity in his sketches. In Tête de femme, the woman’s eye make-up, chignon updo, and decorative earring are reminiscent of Ancient Egyptian style.
Modigliani’s predilection for sculpture is most vividly manifested in his head drawings. These idealised female forms became a profound obsession during his early years in Paris, inspiring his ambition to create a monumental series of stone caryatids. However, declining health constrained his ability to work extensively in sculpture, leading him instead to focus on a two-dimensional exploration of the subject, resulting in more than 60 drawings and studies.
"Undoubtedly, Modigliani's most powerful drawings are the drawings of a sculptor"
The elegantly vertical Tête de femme perfectly exemplifies Modigliani’s aspiration to produce drawings that correspond in quality and intent to his sculptural works. As noted, “The urgent desire to stylise which drove him to purify his forms, to evoke them through sensual arabesques which remain as far removed from intellectualism and cerebralism as the odalisques of Ingres, necessarily placed Modigliani in the same vein as the Italian Old Masters, in a paragon quest to combine painting with its eternal rival, sculpture” (ibid., p. 9).
Modigliani’s personal interpretation of African and other non-Western sources was deepened by his engagement with Picasso’s Cubism, itself profoundly influenced by artworks and cultures from similarly distant regions. While Modigliani never fully embraced Cubism, his work incorporates certain stylistic elements of the movement, such as geometric simplification and the distillation of forms. Tête de femme exemplifies this approach, rendered with architectural precision and clearly defined shapes that construct the figure’s face.
Living in Montparnasse in the years leading up to the First World War, Modigliani was immersed in an environment shaped by avant-garde artists and Cubist sculptors including Ossip Zadkine, Jacques Lipchitz, Alexander Archipenko, and—most notably—Constantin Brâncuși, whom he met in 1909. Brâncuși not only championed Modigliani’s sculptural practice but also encouraged him to work directly in stone and to seek inspiration from a wide range of artistic traditions.

FIG. 3, AMEDEO MODIGLIANI, TÊTE, 1911-12, STONE, SOLD: SOTHEBY’S, NEW YORK, 4 NOVEMBER 2014 FOR $70,725,000
Although brief, Modigliani’s period as a sculptor had a lasting impact on his artistic output. His carved stone heads—with their elongated necks, smooth surfaces, and echoes of primitive artefacts—translated seamlessly into his drawings. The bold graphic lines and masterful use of space to evoke volume in Tête de femme demonstrate how Modigliani successfully conveyed three-dimensional form onto a two-dimensional plane.
The impact of Modigliani’s sculptural work extended beyond the parallel drawings. Discussing this subject, art historian Werner Schmalenbach writes: “The early portraits—those painted in 1915 and 1916, immediately after the sculpture period—are marked by a considerable degree of structuring applied to the human face. They are simplified and endowed to a greater or lesser degree with articulation and rhythm, through the formal manipulations to which they are subjected. Often this formal process has taken place in the pencil studies that precede the paintings. Characteristic features are asymmetry and, as we have seen, an emphasis on the nose, whether linear or stereometric; closed or hatched-over eyes; and added lettering. The faces threaten to veer out of control, but the cause is never expressive, always formal, and never prevents the emergence of a characteristic and individual expression” (Exh. Cat., Düsseldorf, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Amedeo Modigliani. Painting. Sculptures. Drawings, 1991, p. 31).