Who was Amadeo Modigliani, the subject of Johnny Depp's latest directorial?

Indian Express

4 days ago

Johnny Depp's sophomore directorial effort, Modì, Three Days on the Wing of Madness, was released in theatres worldwide last month. The film, which features Italian actor Riccardo Scamarcio in the titular role of the bohemian painter and sculptor Amadeo Modigliani alongside Al Pacino, was widely panned by critics for failing to capture the depth of the artist's short but memorable career.
The biopic attempted to shine a light on a critical, albeit less deliberated upon, period from his life – three days of agonising waiting for a patron who would buy his works, enabling him to escape war-torn Paris. Here is what to know about the painter, and the subject of the film.
Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno, Italy, in 1884 to an affluent Jewish family in the business of money-changing. Their fortunes, however, were overturned soon after the child's birth, which coincided with the economic crisis. In the biography Modigliani: Man and Myth (1958), Modigliani's daughter, Jeanne, recalls growing up listening to members of the family refer to the deceased artist as her 'poor father'. Poverty, in fact, defined Modigliani's entire 35-year life.
Despite the poverty and his pleurisy diagnosis at age 11, his mother Eugénie, of the intellectual clan of the Garsins of Marseilles, took note of his penchant for art and encouraged him. After being homeschooled by his mother for the first decade of his life, he went to study painting at the Florence Academy of Arts in 1898, where the Italian master Guglielmo Micheli took young Modigliani under his wing.
Over the next two years, he learnt the naturalism and realism of the traditional Renaissance style. He would eventually reject all of this, especially Micheli's suggestion to paint en plein air (in open air). 'Modigliani never really developed a taste for this style of working, sketching in cafés, but preferred to paint indoors, especially in his own studio,' notes The Modigliani Project, a non-profit organisation focused on cataloguing the works of the artist, on its official website.
On his way to finding his unique expression, Modigliani encountered several influences, including the Macchiaioli, a group of Italian artists who had broken away from the academic Italian style of painting and innovated a style that in some ways preceded what we today know as French impressionism. Modigliani, however, didn't quite take to this either, particularly because of their focus on landscapes.
Discovering self-expression
In 1903, he moved to Venice, where he enrolled at the Scuola Libera del Nudo del Regio Istituto di Belle Arti (now known as the Accademia di Belle Arti), but spent the following two years self-educating. 'He hardly attended the classes at the Institute where he had enrolled, but throughout his stay he diligently visited museums and churches to study the painters of the past as well as ensuring he was acquainted with the work of his contemporaries. He would also have had at his disposal in the Venice Civic Museums their collections of African art with its wooden sculptures,' writes Italian artist Rosella BLUE Mocerino in her blog, The Painter's Eye.
It was also in Venice that Modigliani fell in love with sculpture, which he believed was his 'real métier', according to his friend, the Welsh artist and writer Nina Hamnett. He would eventually give up this vocation in 1916 as well for a multitude of reasons – 'the cost of the material, his difficulties in finding a place to work, his illness, the pressure put on him by the dealers and patrons who would rather buy paintings and drawings,' Jeanne Modigliani recalled. He tried his best to hold onto the medium, even sculpting in wood.
Modigliani's stopovers across Italy – from Livorno to Florence and then to Venice – were all, however, leading him to the ultimate destination for all avant-garde artists of the time: Paris.
72 hours in Paris
Modigliani arrived in Paris in 1906 and settled in Le Bateau-Lavoir, 'a commune for penniless artists in Montmartre'. Even as poverty loomed large over his very existence, he is known to have appeared in public dressed to the nines in his 'brown corduroys, scarlet scarf and large black hat'. Upon meeting Pablo Picasso in his trademark workmen's clothes, Modigliani is documented to have said, 'even though the man was a genius, that did not excuse his uncouth appearance'. The arrogance of elegance was, however, not to last long.
'In Paris, he discovered the work of Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and, among the younger, more radical set, Henri Matisse and Picasso. Paul Cézanne in particular he pronounced 'admirable', one of his favourite adjectives. Within a year of arriving in Paris, however, his demeanour and reputation had changed dramatically. He transformed himself from a dapper academician artist into a sort of prince of vagabonds,' notes The Modigliani Project's website. His addiction to alcohol and heavy drug use, which often made him the subject of public spectacles, earned him the moniker of a 'bohemian artist'.
After the army barred him from enlisting to fight in World War I owing to his poor health, unlike his artist peers, Modigliani was looking to escape Paris with his pregnant wife, Jeanne Hébuterne. His dealer friend, Léopold Zborowski, had told him about the art collector Maurice Gangnat, who was expected to come to Paris and had expressed an interest in purchasing his work.
The three days on which Depp focuses his two-hour-long directorial may not have been as dramatic as depicted, but these were certainly a significant moment in Modigliani's life. The 72-hour wait assumes significance for the struggle that the artist endured as he navigated alcoholism, worsening tuberculosis and penury.
Whether or what Gangnat finally purchased from Modigliani is unclear, but the artist did leave Paris for Nice in the spring of 1918, where he created portraits in distinct Mediterranean tones, reportedly influenced by the warmer climate. He returned to Paris in 1919 and succumbed to his tuberculosis a year later, passing away in a hospital in Paris at the age of 35.
Modigliani's enduring legacy
Throughout his career, Modigliani rejected the prevalent styles. Even as his expression was influenced by several of his contemporaries, he looked beyond his immediate surroundings to ancient Greek, Roman and African art for inspiration. He was also deeply inspired by the literary works of Nietzsche and Charles Baudelaire. His style – both in paintings and sculptures – was defined by elongated features, in rejection of Renaissance realism.
His best-known works are the series of nudes that he made during his stay with Zborowski, who exclusively represented him at the time. His most expensive painting is Nu Couché (Reclining Nude), which sold for $170.4 million at Sotheby's in 2018. It was part of his only solo exhibition in Paris in 1917.