In a word, “Modì” is “maudit” per definition: a troubled and unconventional soul who is remembered for having lived a short but dramatic and intense life.
Palazzo Blu in Pisa will use its charming halls to host an exhibition showcasing not only a rich and well-reasoned selection of works borrowed from the Centre Pompidou in Paris but also wonderful masterpieces belonging to the main public and private collections, preserved both in Italy and abroad. The happening is meant to recreate the cultural atmosphere in which such an extraordinary experience as the Belle Époque painting came to ripeness. This exciting journey is intertwined with Modigliani’s artistic evolution: a relentless and endless pursuit of new inspiration which visitors could follow from his debut years in Livorno to his transfer to Paris in 1906.
It is in the climate of the Parisian avant-garde, playground for the well-known Fauve painters, that our unrestrained womanizer develops his artistic manifesto. His circle of friends includes characters such as Marc Chagall, Max Jacob, Georges Braque, Jean Cocteau; the masters he is especially in debt with are called Picasso,Toulouse-Lautrec and Cézanne.
Along with Modì’s works, the exhibition will also focus on the most renowned masterpieces by contemporary artists who shared with him their time and adventures in Montparnasse – among whom Chaim Soutine, Pablo Picasso, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger must be mentioned without forgetting popular names like those of Maurice Utrillo, Suzanne Valadon, André Derain and Raoul Dufy, Juan Gris and Gino Severini.
The last part of the exhibition will display, on the one hand, a representative selection of sculptures by Modigliani and acknowledged contemporary sculptors like the famous Constantin Brancusi, on the other, a rare series of phographs taken by Brancusi himself.
The scientific supervision has been entrusted to Jean Michel Bouhours, qualified Modigliani expert and researcher appointed by the Modern Collections Department at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. This event offers therefore a matchless opportunity to rediscover a cultural period with a very strong impact on European art as a whole.
