Sunday, May 10, 2020

The Introduction of the Works by Amedeo Modigliani: 45. Portrait of Celso Lagar (1915)


How are you?

Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani one by one every week.

The 45th work to introduce for this week is “Portrait of Celso Lagar” in 1915.

This work is a portrait of an expressionist style and an oil painting on canvas with the size of 35 x 27 cm, and currently possessed by the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, Israel.

Photography and portrait of Celso Lagar by Modigliani

Celso Lagar was a Spanish sculptor, painter, and lithographer who was born on February 4, 1891 in Ciudad Rodrigo (Salamanca) and died on September 6, 1966 in Seville.

Celso Lagar

Lagar, the artist of the first generation of the École de Paris, lived most of his life in Paris and was influenced by avant-garde movements such as Cubism or Fauvism. Born as the eldest of the four children of the cabinetmaker Gumersindo Lagar Iglesias, Lagar entered the workshop of Miguel Blay, who was one of the best sculptors at the time. He studied at the Barcelona Arts and Crafts School from 1910 to 1911, and then moved to Paris in 1912 to study sculpture in Paris by the advice of Blay. 

Miguel Blay

In Paris, Lagar met Joseph Bernard, Max Jacob, Andre Derain, Blaise Cendrars, his friend Modigliani and his future wife, the French sculptor Hortense Bégué. Lagar later abandoned sculpture for painting and after losing his wife Hortense Begué he suffered from severe depression.

Scene de Cirque, Celso Lagar (1925-26)

The characteristics of this painting are that the eyebrows are extraordinarily drawn thick compared to other paintings, and that the traces of Cloisonnism that emphasizes the outlines by dark contours are shown. For the face, it looks like that the face was first drawn in a triangle shape, and then the cheek was later added. The ears of the model also show a different color and shape from the face, thus it looks like that the ears were added to the painting later.

The work at the Paris Gallery Bing Exhibition (1925)

Finally, for the style of the eye, it looks like the transitional form of one of the Modigliani’s style in which one eye is normally drawn but the other one is empty without pupil.

Thank you.




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