How are you?
Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is
currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani.
The 88th work to introduce for this
week is “Seated woman with baby (Motherhood)” in 1919.
This work is an expressionist style
portrait and an oil painting on canvas with the size of 130 x 81 cm and possessed
by the Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM) in
Villeneuve d'Ascq, France.
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| Lille Métropole Museum of Modern, Contemporary and Outsider Art (LaM) |
This work is remarkable for a number
of reasons, especially for showing the last stylistic change in Modigliani's
painting, a few weeks before his death. Rigid and sculptural at first glance,
this work implies a return to impasto technique and is painted in rich colors,
but gives an overall monochrome impression.
Another notable aspect of this work is its subject. Except for “Gypsy Woman with a Baby”, this is only work Modigliani painted on the subject of “maternity”.
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| Gypsy Woman with a Baby, Amedeo Modigliani (1919) |
This work is also remarkable
in terms of its dimensions, and apart from white and black, with common colors
such as brown, red and gray-green, Modigliani added the colors of ultramarine
for baby’s sweater, the bright green for baby’s bonnet, the pink for mother's
neckline, and the light blue for mother's eyes.
In this rigorously constructed work, everything combines to create balance and serenity, but the emotion it elicits is strictly aesthetic. When looking at the figures in the work, the baby is like a doll and the mother is like a popular Madonna, and the mother and baby seem to have no tenderness and mutual interaction.
In addition, the sculptural mother and baby can be seen as the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus in the paintings of medieval or early Renaissance eras. The vertically divided background is reminiscent of Modigliani's previous works, influenced by Cubism.
It was one of the collection of
Roger Dutilleul, Modigliani's patron and art collector.
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| Roger Dutilleul, Amedeo Modigliani (1919) |
Thank you.
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