Rétrospective Modigliani à la Tate Modern - Les derniers jours

Amedeo Modigliani - Marie (Marie, fille du peuple) 1918

Oil paint on canvas - 612 x 498 mm

Kunstmuseum Basel, Bequest Dr. Walther Hanhart, Riehen, 1975 

Derniers jours pour la rétrospective Amedeo Modigliani à la Tate Modern (Londres). Elle fermera ses portes le 02 avril 2018.
Des nus et des portraits, bien sûr, mais aussi des sculptures et un paysage...

Amedeo Modigliani - Beatrice Hastings 1915

Oil on paper - 400 x 285 mm - Private Collection 

This autumn, Tate Modern stages the most comprehensive Modigliani exhibition ever held in the UK, bringing together a dazzling range of his iconic portraits, sculptures and the largest ever group of nudes to be shown in this country. Although he died tragically young, Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920) was a ground-breaking artist who pushed the boundaries of the art of his time. Including 100 works – many of them rarely exhibited and nearly 40 of which have never before been shown in the UK – the exhibition re-evaluates this familiar figure, looking afresh at the experimentation that shaped his career and made Modigliani one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century.

Amedeo Modigliani - Head - c.1911

Medium Stone - 394 x 311 x 187 mm

Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Gift of Lois Orswell

© President and Fellows of Harvard College

A section devoted to Modigliani’s nudes, perhaps the best-known and most provocative of the artist’s works, are a major highlight. In these striking canvases Modigliani invented shocking new compositions that modernised figurative painting. His explicit depictions also proved controversial and led to the police censoring his only solo exhibition in his lifetime, at Berthe Weill’s gallery in 1917, on grounds of indecency. This group of 12 nudes is the largest group ever seen in the UK, with paintings including Nude 1917 (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart) and Reclining Nude c.1919 (Museum of Modern Art, New York). 

Amedeo Modigliani - Woman's Head (With Chignon) - 1911

Sandstone - 572 x 219 x 235 mm

Merzbacher Kunststiftung 

Born in Livorno, Italy and working in Paris from 1906, Modigliani’s career was one of continual evolution. The exhibition begins with the artist’s arrival in Paris, exploring the creative environments and elements of popular culture that were central to his life and work. Inspired by the art of Paul Cézanne, Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Pablo Picasso, Modigliani began to experiment and develop his own distinctive visual language, seen in early canvases such as Bust of a Young Woman 1908 (Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, Villeneuve-d'Ascq) and The Beggar of Livorno 1909 (Private Collection). His circle included poets, dealers, writers and musicians, many of whom posed for his portraits including Diego Rivera 1914 (Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf), Juan Gris 1915 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) and Jean Cocteau 1916 (The Henry and Rose Pearlman Foundation, Princeton University Art Museum). The exhibition will also reconsider the role of women in Modigliani’s work, including editor and writer Beatrice Hastings, who was not simply the artist’s lover but an important figure in the cultural landscape of the time. 

Amedeo Modigliani - Cagnes Landscape - 1919

Oil paint on canvas - 460 x 290 mm

Private Collection 

Modigliani features exceptional examples of the artist’s lesser-known sculpture, bringing together a substantial group of his Heads made before the First World War. Although his interests would soon move on, he spent a short but intense period focusing on carving, influenced by contemporaries and friends including Constantin Brâncuși and Jacob Epstein. Suffering from poor health, Modigliani left Paris in 1918 for an extended period in the South of France. Here he adopted a more Mediterranean colour palette and, instead of his usual metropolitan sitters, he began painting local people, including shopkeepers and children, such as Young Woman of the People 1918 (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) and Boy with a Blue Jacket 1919 (Indianapolis Museum of Art). 

Amedeo Modigliani - Boy in Short Pants - c.1918

Oil paint on canvas - 997 x 648 mm

Dallas Museum of Art, gift of the Leland Fikes Foundation, Inc. 1977 

The exhibition concludes with some of Modigliani’s best-known depictions of his closest circle. Friends and lovers provided him with much-needed financial and emotional support during his turbulent last years while also serving as models. These included his dealer and close friend Léopold Zborowski and his companion Hanka, as well as Jeanne Hébuterne, the mother of Modigliani’s child and one of the most important women in his life. When Modigliani died in 1920 from tubercular meningitis, Jeanne tragically committed suicide. Tate Modern brings together several searching portraits of her from Modgliani’s final years, on loan from international collections such as the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, which depict her in a range of guises from young girl to mother. 

Amedeo Modigliani - Portrait of Paul Guillaume, Novo Pilota - 1915

Oil paint on card mounted on cradled plywood - 1235 x 925 x 100 mm

Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris. Collection Jean Walter et Paul Guillaume 

Amedeo Modigliani - Self-Portrait as Pierrot - 1915

Oil paint on cardboard - 430 x 270 mm

Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen 

Amedeo Modigliani - Portrait of a Young Woman - 1918

Oil paint on canvas. 457 x 280 mm

Yale University Art Gallery 

Amedeo Modigliani - Jacques and Berthe Lipchitz - 1916

Oil on canvas. 813 x 543 mm

The Art Institute of Chicago

Amedeo Modigliani - Jeanne Hébuterne - 1919

Oil paint on canvas. 914 x 730 mm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Amedeo Modigliani - Juan Gris - 1915

Oil paint on canvas. 549 x 381 mm

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 

Amedeo Modigliani - Reclining Nude - 1919

Oil on canvas. 724 x 1165 mm

Museum of Modern Art, New York 

Amedeo Modigliani - Seated Nude - 1917

Oil paint on canvas. 1140 x 740 mm

Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, Lukasart in Flanders 

Amedeo Modigliani - The Little Peasant - c.1918

Oil paint on canvas - 1000 x 645 mm

Tate, presented by Miss Jenny Blaker in memory of Hugh Blaker 1941

Amedeo Modigliani, Léopold Zborowski, Anders Osterlind and Nanic Osterlind,

Haut-de-Cagnes 1919.  

Modigliani in his studio, photograph by Paul Guillaume, c.1915 

Rétrospective Modigliani -  Tate Modern (Londres), jusqu'au 02 avril 2018
Commissaires de l'exposition : Nancy Ireson et  Simonetta Fraquelli assistée de Emma Lewis