Amedeo Modigliani, dipinti e disegni Incontri italiani 1900-1920
curated by Licisco Magagnato e Osvaldo Patani
25.11.1984 - 31.01.1985
Introduction
Between November 1984 and January 1985, Galleria dello Scudo celebrated the centenary of Amedeo Modigliani’s birth with an exhibition organized under the patronage of Regione del Veneto and the Municipality of Verona. The exhibition presented a group of sixty-six works by the artist, coming from public and private collections and including eleven paintings, all boasting an extensive and documented literature. Furthermore, it showed a selection of works on paper – pencil, watercolour and tempera – in order to highlight the different aspects of his creative path and offer new elements by reconstructing the network of “Italian meetings” which mark his biographical story between Livorno, Venice and subsequently Paris, from the years of his training to the period of more mature artistic commitment.
The exhibition was opened by Ritratto di Mario Buggelli (1907), dedicated to the painter Anselmo Bucci, followed by numerous nude studies and “Caryatids Heads” (1910–1911) owned by Paul Alexandre, friend and first patron of Modigliani. Of great importance is Cariatide rosa con bordo blu (1913), a watercolour initially owned by Mariska Diederich, later entered the Sydney G. Biddle Collection, Philadelphia, and since 1956 exhibited in the most important monographic shows. Cariatide (1914), the large-sized tempera entering Cesare Tosi Collection, epitomizes how archaic sculpture has had a fundamental influence in defining the artist’s repertoire so far.
The exhibition proposed also paintings from 1915 that belonged to Paul Guillaume, such as La ragazza rossa (Testa di donna dai capelli rossi) in the collection of Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna in Turin, Testa di ragazza dai capelli sciolti and L’enfant gras, the latter formerly owned by Lamberto Vitali and later gifted to Pinacoteca di Brera. Dating from 1917 are the canvases once owned by Léopold Zborowski, writer, poet and merchant of Modigliani, such as La rossa dagli occhi azzurri, Oscar Miestchaninoff and Signora dal collaretto (Anna Zborowska) from Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome.
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At the request of Assessorato alla Cultura della Provincia di Torino, and with the intervention of Soprintendenza ai Beni Ambientali e Architettonici del Piemonte, after the period at Galleria dello Scudo the exhibition was moved to Turin, Palazzo Reale, from March 2 to April 14, 1985. A second edition of the catalogue, unchanged, was published on this occasion.
Artist
He was born in Livorno in 1884. In 1898 he began attending the school of painting and in 1902 he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, following Fattori’s lessons at the Scuola Libera del Nudo. He moved to the Venice Academy in 1903. He became interested in the novelties of the Secessions and in 1906 he arrived in Paris where he admired and studied the work of Cézanne.
