Modigliani, Amadeo in The Books Store

In 1920, at the age of thirty-five, Amedeo Modigliani died in poverty and neglect in Paris, much like a figure out of La Boh`eme. His life had been as dramatic as his death. An Italian Jew from a bourgeois family, "Modi" had a weakness for drink, hashish, and the many women-including the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova-who were drawn to his good looks. His friends included Picasso, Utrillo, Soutine, and other important artists of his day, yet his own work stood apart, generating little interest while he lived. Today's art world, however, acknowledges him as a master whose limited oeuvre-sculptures, portraits, and some of the most appealing nudes in the whole of modern art-cannot satisfy collectors' demand.

With a lively but judicious hand, biographer Jeffrey Meyers sketches Modigliani and the art he produced, illuminating not only this little-known figure but also the painters, writers, lovers, and others who inhabited early twentieth-century Paris with him.

A stunning volume accompanies the largest retrospective of this modernist master ever mounted, an exhibit, opening at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris in October 2002 and running through March 2003, will be a comprehensive survey of Modigliani's career, from his earliest days as a painter in search of a style to his premature death in 1920. The exhibit presents Modigliani's paintings, sculptures, drawings, and never before seen masterpieces, selected from major international museums and private collections.

Modigliani's relatively short working life was enriched by associations with Toulouse-Lautrec, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Cezanne, and Brancusi. This book offers students of modernism the opportunity to view as a continuity the monumental work of a primary artist of Fauvism and Cubism.

A member of the Bohemian circle that included artists such as Picasso, Brancusi, Juan Gris, Utrillo and many writers, Modigliani is best known for his portraits of women, which contain elongated necks, almond-shaped eyes, and serene facial expressions. Few artists before or since have created works of such classical beauty.