The Tragic Artist

Jeanne Hebuterne with Hat by Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani was a Jewish artist born in Italy on July 12, 1884. He moved to France in 1906 where he spent the rest of his artistic career and died in Paris on January 24, 1920, at the age of 35. Shortly before his birth, his father's money-changing business went bankrupt and the family became destitute. Modigliani's birth saved the family from certain ruin, because, as according to an ancient Italian law, creditors could not seize the bed of a pregnant woman or a mother with a newborn child. When officials entered the family home as his mother went into labor, the family protected their most valuable possessions by piling them on top of the expectant mother.

After being home-schooled until the age of ten, Amedeo spent his teenage years suffering from recurrent bouts of pleurisy along with typhoid fever and tuberculosis. His mother would nurse young Amedeo back to health as there were no resources for medical care.

Modigliani began drawing and painting at an early age and worked in Guglielmo Micheli's Art School from 1898 to 1900. Here his earliest formal artistic instruction took place in an atmosphere deeply steeped in a study of the styles and themes of 19th century Italian art. While with Micheli, Modigliani not only studied landscape, but portraiture, still-life, and the nude. His fellow students recall that the latter was where he displayed his greatest talent, and apparently this was not an entirely academic pursuit for the teenager; when not painting nudes, was occupied with seducing the household maid.

Suffering from the effects of tuberculosis he moved to Venice in 1902 and began smoking hashish and frequenting disreputable parts of the city where he sketched nudes and drank wine to excess. In 1906, bored with Venice, he moved back to Paris and took up a bohemian lifestyle, drinking absinthe until he was drunk and using drugs. His studio became a disheveled mess and he destroyed most of his art. While drunk, he would sometimes strip himself naked at social gatherings. He became the epitome of the tragic artist, creating a posthumous legend almost as well-known as van Gogh. He continued to paint even while his alcoholic blackouts became more frequent. He married and fathered a daughter.

In 1920, after not hearing from him for several days, his downstairs neighbor checked on the family and found Modigliani in bed, delirious and holding onto his wife, Jeanne Hebuterne, who was nearly nine months pregnant. The neighbor summoned a doctor, but little could be done because Modigliani was dying of tubercular meningitis. He died on January 24, 1920. His wife was taken to her parent's home, where, inconsolable, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window two days after Amedeo's death, killing herself and her unborn child.

Modigliani died penniless and destitute and managed only one solo exhibition in his entire life. He gave away most of his work in exchange for meals and lodging.

Just paint it!