Egon Schiele

Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was born on 12 July1884 in the Italian Mediterranean port of Livorno. in january 1906 Modigliani left for paris determined to chance his luck as a portrait painter. He enthusiastically adopted a similar bohemian lifestyle to that he had sampled in the old quarters of venice. he used stimulants, mostly Hashish and alchol maybe in an attempt to overcome his characteristic shyness. during his early years in Paris he affected an artistic style of dress. Distressed by the contuinal financial hardships Modiglian began to deteriorate he was expelled from dr alexandres artists comunity for destroying other members work.
A memorial exhibition of cezannes work was held in 1907 and soon Modigliani was imitating Cezannes way of suggesting form and space through colour. 
he apears to have lived in conditions of extream povertyvsoon after his arrival in paris. he found cheap lodgings in montparnasse. his allowence from home was to little to afford art materials. he turned to sclupture, he would reputedly steal sleepers from the new mexico metro line nearby for wood to carve and many of the Caryatids were crafted by stone blocks removed from construction sites at night. 

Despite his limited subject matter of portraits and nudes Modiglianis work was unique in its combination of traditional form with new painting techniques.


Portriats and nudes established themselves as Modiglianis subjects from the begining (he painted only a few landscapes) he was not concerned with portraying realistic apperances but expressing the feeling and mood of his models especially in relation to himself. most often in the early part of his career tension and anxiety were the recurring motifs probably echoing those features in his own life at the time. Living as a poverty stricken foreigner in Paris brought its own insecurities compounded by his feeling of alienation from the avant grade artists his lack of money meant shortage of materials so his paint was spread thinly and he had to use both sides of the canvas. Nonetheless Certian characteristics emerge as trademarks of his style as early 1908 fixing his own personal identity as an artist. and these are refinded into the elegance and poise of his last pictures in his portraits sloping shoulders and slender necks support gently tilting heads in which small eyes are caught in a hypnotic expression.
From Itality modigliani carried with him the influences of symbolism and stile liberty and his early works reflect this in mood and in their linear pattern. but in Paris Modigliani discovered Cezanne at his retrospective exhibition in 1907 and his debt to Cezanne is revealed in the construction of his compositions in the arrangment of forms and isolation of planes through colour as well as his choppy brushstrokes although Cezanne had opened a new direction in art leading to cubism he had never lost respect for the integrity of the human form which became central for modigliani.

when attempting a realistic image an artist uses colour in a natural way and tries to portray exactly what he sees in a stylized image however colour is used to emphasize a particular point.

Modigliani relied on a linear graphic style influenced by his early enthusiasm for art nouveau and used elogation to enhance the expressive quality of his line his long faces too reflect the african masks newly discovered by the art world. but Modigliani used the device of elongation to convey many different qualities of character from arrogance to grace depending on how he saw his sitter.