EARLY DRAWINGS BY AMEDEO MODIGLIANI ON VIEW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE U.S. AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM

Modigliani Unmasked September 15, 2017–February 4, 2018

New York, NY, March 28, 2017— The Jewish Museum will present Modigliani Unmasked, an exhibition featuring early drawings by Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920) that were acquired directly from the artist by Dr. Paul Alexandre, his close friend and first patron. These works—many of which are being shown for the first time in the U.S.— will illuminate how Modigliani’s heritage as an Italian Sephardic Jew is pivotal to understanding his artistic output. The exhibition will be on view at the Jewish Museum from September 15, 2017 through February 4, 2018.

Modigliani Unmasked will consider the celebrated artist shortly after he arrived in Paris in 1906, when the city was still roiling with anti-Semitism after the long-running tumult of the Dreyfus Affair and the influx of foreign emigres. Modigliani’s Italian-Sephardic background helped forge a complex cultural identity that rested in part on the ability of Italian Jews historically to assimilate and embrace diversity. The exhibition will show that Modigliani’s art cannot be fully understood without acknowledging the ways the artist responded to the social realities that he confronted in the unprecedented artistic melting pot of Paris. The drawings from the Alexandre collection reveal the emerging artist himself, enmeshed in his own particular identity quandary, struggling to discover what portraiture might mean in a modern world of racial complexity.

The exhibition will include approximately 150 works, those from the Alexandre collection as well as a selection of Modigliani’s paintings, sculptures, and other drawings from collections around the world. Modigliani’s art will be complemented by work representative of the various multicultural influences—African, Greek, Egyptian, and Khmer—that inspired the young artist during this lesser-known, early period.

Among the works featured are a mysterious, unfinished portrait of Dr. Alexandre, never seen before in the U.S.; impressions of the theater; life studies and female nudes, among them the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova; and drawings of caryatids and heads, which are telling of Modigliani’s sculptures, created over a five-year period from 1909 to 1914.

Modigliani Unmasked is organized by Mason Klein, Curator, The Jewish Museum.

http://thejewishmuseum.org/press/press-release/modigliani-2017-announcement-release