?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 50,000 - $ 80,000
AMEDEO MODIGLIANI Femme nue, trois quarts, debout.
Pencil on card, circa 1915. 347x261 mm; 13 3/4x10 1/4 inches. Signed in pencil, lower left recto.
Ex-collection Hammer Galleries, New York, with the label on the frame back; private collection, New York; thence by descent.
Modigliani (1884-1920) was born in the Jewish enclave of Livorno, Italy, to a French mother and Italian father. He began artistic training at an early age after facing a bout of health problems, and relocated to Paris to pursue a career as a painter in 1906. Modigliani lived for some time in the famous Montmartre artists commune Le Bateau-Lavoir, where he became enmeshed in the bohemian modernist lifestyle.
Modigliani played a key role in challenging representation in early 20th century Paris. Working alongside Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, Modigliani forged his own style amid the spread of Cubism and Fauvism. Like many of his peers he visited the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro and observed the influx of exoticised art and artifacts on the market in Paris, which heavily influenced his style. Modigliani combined elements of Italian Mannerism, ancient Egyptian art, and African masks and sculpture in his sensuous, elongated figural studies.
Modigliani died of tuberculosis at the young age of 35. Despite the support of patrons including Dr. Paul Alexandre and Léopold Zborowski, he died still a struggling artist. Underappreciated in his time, Modigliani has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity posthumously, including revisitations of his work in exhibitions this year at the Jewish Museum, New York, and Tate Modern, London.
