Amedeo Modigliani

Galerie Beyeler, Basel
Private Collection, Basel
Private Collection, Zurich

Ambrogio Ceroni, Amedeo Modigliani, dessins et sculptures, Milan, 1965, no. 125, illustrated p. 36

A ¼ inch wide mat stain runs along the left, bottom and right edges. At the top left corner is a small paper fill and repaired tears, at the top right corner is what appears to be a small paper fill (or a small abrasion to the paper with inpainting). Near the bottom of the sheet to the right of center is a 3 inch repaired tear. There are thin spots along the right, left and bottom edges. Finally, the entire sheet is laid down to a thin sheet of Japanese tissue. There is minor buckling of the sheet. The following condition report has been provided by Alan Firkser of Paper Conservation Studio, Inc., an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's.
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Modigliani's superb series of nudes are generally acclaimed as his greatest accomplishment.  The artist had painted nudes as early as 1908 but it was only after he abandoned sculpture in 1914 that he developed the style of painting so characteristically his own, defining his ideal of femininity in a sequence of masterpieces.  Working in a unique manner that synthesized elements of mannerist, 'primitive' and contemporary art, Modigliani devised a style at once abstract and sensual, idealized and earthy.  The result is a series of figure drawings and paintings, extraordinary for both their sensitive psychological characterization and their frankly erotic appeal. The erotic appeal of the present work is heightened by the model's pose.  Consistent with the majority of nudes painted by the artist after 1914, the sitter is provocatively exposed by the artist's placement of her legs.  The voluptuous contours of her body, the sculptural roundness of her forms (reminiscent of Modigliani's Caryatide) and her frontal pose contribute to the drawings highly charged quality.

The influence of African and Asian sculpture, to which Modigliani had been exposed since his arrival to Paris in 1906, is exemplified by the geometric linear simplification of the Nude's figure and face, and lends this work many of the features that characterize Modigliani's post 1914 work: the sitter's S shaped image, the almond eyes and the sharp nose.  Modigliani's image, for all of its non-naturalistic, 'Africanizing' rendering, retains a quintessentially European quality.  "No other painter in our century or any other has painted the female human body as [Modigliani] did.  His nudes... are the continuation of a great tradition of European painting, not only thematically but also in the 'spiritual' interpretation of the theme, insofar as they constitute a celebration of beauty, immaculateness and perfection and thus an idealization of physical Nature" (Werner Schmalenbach, Amedeo Modigliani, Munich, 1990 p.47)

Fig 1. Amedeo Modigliani, Nu Assis, 1916, The Courtauld Institute, London