Modigliani: Modern Gazes
Amedeo Modigliani was a European artist in the broadest and most innovative sense. Focusing on the image of the human being, on the physical and on self-confident femininity, Amedeo Modigliani positioned himself as a pioneer of modernism at a time of dissolution of form, abstraction and misogyny at the beginning of the 20th century. During World War I, his portraits and nudes accompanied and shaped the development of the human image of a young generation of artists working on figuration in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, or Dresden. For the first time, an exhibition on Modigliani broadens the view beyond Paris and considers his work from a European perspective.
Ceroni 202, Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin
Amedeo Modigliani, Lying female nude with intertwined hands, 1917
"The last Modigliani retrospective in Germany took place in 2009 at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. Exhibitions, whether in Madrid, London, Helsinki or New York, focused on Modigliani's Parisian environment and Modigliani's friendships with writers and collectors. Yet there is still no exhibition that asks, in the context of international modernism, what the specific provocation of Modigliani's works lay in. Our exhibition expands the context of Modigliani's art beyond its Parisian surroundings for the first time and shows references to Paula Modersohn-Becker, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner." - Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, and Christiane Lange, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart.
For a long time, the development of modern art was described as a path to abstraction. In contrast, the multitude of artist groups, their manifestos, but also the exhibitions at the beginning of the 20th century testify to an equal perception of different positions by contemporaries. Throughout Europe there were artists who continued to work on figuration in parallel with the innovation brought about by Cubism and Expressionism. Their intense preoccupation with portraiture and the nude was just as provocative as the dissolution of form.
bpk, Berlin, RMN - Grand Palais / Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau, Artists in front of the Café de la Rotonde, Paris, from left to right: Moïse Kisling, Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Max Jacob, Pablo Picasso, Emilienne Pâquerette, August, 12, 1916
bpk, Berlin, RMN - Grand Palais / Archives Alain Bouret, Dominique Couto
Dominique Couto, Modigliani in his studio, rue Ravignan (detail), 1915
It was not until the traumas of the First World War that a cult of coolness emerged in European painting of the 1920s. The zeitgeist, later called New Objectivity, was also shaped by women writers, fashion designers and painters. With short hairstyles and masculine clothing, some of them were fashionably ahead of their time and lived emancipation. The women of this time, associated as modern bourgeois, had already met Modigliani in the circle of the Parisian avant-garde. Encouraged as a child by his mother and aunt, who taught languages and were literate, Modigliani sought out the proximity of intellectual and musically educated women before and after the First World War, who explored new scope in Parisian artistic life. Modigliani transferred reflections of these relationships to his paintings, portraying both sexes of the Parisian avant-garde as cosmopolitan artist friends across borders. The stoic nobility of his portraits anticipated the New Objectivity. Modigliani depicted the new image of man without expressive tendencies, yet portrayed the emancipated woman without the cold detachment of New Objectivity or the dissecting view of postwar society. Modigliani even reduced references to the sitter's social background to a minimum. His portraits of women and nudes showed the self-confident matter-of-factness of a femme moderne.
Ceroni 214, Nahmad Collection
Amedeo Modigliani, Girl with a striped blouse, 1917
Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin
Jeanne Mammen, Sketchbook, 1914
The exhibition Modigliani: Modern Gazes brings together around 100 works. A unique dialogue unfolds between Modigliani's art and the paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures by Gustav Klimt, Jeanne Mammen, Pablo Picasso, Natalja Goncharova, Egon Schiele and Paula Modersohn-Becker, among others. Lenders include the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, the Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., the Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, and the Nahmad Collection.
An exhibition of the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, under the patronage of the Ambassay of the Italian Republic in Germany.
The exhibition at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart will be on view from November 24, 2023 to March 17, 2024.
Cover image: Amedeo Modigliani: Reclining Nude (on the left side) (Detail), 1917 © Nahmad Collection