Modigliani: Modern Gazes

27. April – Aug 18, 2024

Almond-shaped, sightless eyes are an unmistakable feature of Modigliani’s style. With their stoic noblesse, his portraits and nudes have become icons of modern art. Like Frida Kahlo and Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani provoked both hostility and admiration, and his early death encouraged the creation of legends. Only a few of his pieces are found in German collections. The show Modigliani: Modern Gazes, the first exhibition of his work in Germany in fifteen years, offered a revised image of Modigliani, presenting him as an artist who turned his gaze to emancipated women.

#ModiglianiBarberini

Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin

Amedeo Modigliani: Reclining Nude with Intertwined Hands, 1917

"The last Modigliani retrospective in Germany took place in 2009 at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn. Exhibitions, whether in Madrid, London, Helsinki or New York, focused on Modigliani's Parisian environment and Modigliani's friendships with writers and collectors. Yet there is still no exhibition that asks, in the context of international modernism, what the specific provocation of Modigliani's works lay in. Our exhibition expands the context of Modigliani's art beyond its Parisian surroundings for the first time and shows references to Paula Modersohn-Becker, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Wilhelm Lehmbruck and Ernst Ludwig Kirchner."

Ortrud Westheider, Museum Barberini, and Christiane Lange, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

For a long time, the development of modern art was described as a path to abstraction. In contrast, the multitude of artist groups, their manifestos, but also the exhibitions at the beginning of the 20th century testify to an equal perception of different positions by contemporaries. Throughout Europe there were artists who continued to work on figuration in parallel with the innovation brought about by Cubism and Expressionism. Their intense preoccupation with portraiture and the nude was just as provocative as the dissolution of form.

bpk, Berlin, RMN - Grand Palais / Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau: Artists in front of the Café de la Rotonde, Paris, from left to right: Moïse Kisling, Manuel Ortiz de Zárate, Max Jacob, Pablo Picasso, Emilienne Pâquerette, August, 12, 1916

bpk, Berlin, RMN - Grand Palais / Archives Alain Bouret, Dominique Couto

Dominique Couto: Modigliani in his studio, rue Ravignan (detail), 1915

It was not until the traumas of the First World War that a cult of coolness emerged in European painting of the 1920s. The zeitgeist, later called New Objectivity, was also shaped by women writers, fashion designers and painters. With short hairstyles and masculine clothing, some of them were fashionably ahead of their time and lived emancipation. The women of this time, associated as modern bourgeois, had already met Modigliani in the circle of the Parisian avant-garde. Encouraged as a child by his mother and aunt, who taught languages and were literate, Modigliani sought out the proximity of intellectual and musically educated women before and after the First World War, who explored new scope in Parisian artistic life. Modigliani transferred reflections of these relationships to his paintings, portraying both sexes of the Parisian avant-garde as cosmopolitan artist friends across borders. The stoic nobility of his portraits anticipated the New Objectivity. Modigliani depicted the new image of man without expressive tendencies, yet portrayed the emancipated woman without the cold detachment of New Objectivity or the dissecting view of postwar society. Modigliani even reduced references to the sitter's social background to a minimum. His portraits of women and nudes showed the self-confident matter-of-factness of a femme moderne.

Nahmad Collection, Photo: Christie's Images / Bridgeman Images

Amedeo Modigliani: Young Girl with a Striped Blouse, 1917

Jeanne-Mammen-Stiftung im Stadtmuseum Berlin / Photo: Dorin Alexandru Ionita, Berlin, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2024

Jeanne Mammen: Sketchbook II, Page 38, 1910-1914

The exhibition Modigliani: Modern Gazes brought together fifty-six of Modigliani’s portraits and nudes in dialogue with thirty-three paintings, drawings, and sculptures by artists such as Gustav Klimt, Jeanne Mammen, Pablo Picasso, Natalia Goncharova, Egon Schiele, and Paula Modersohn-Becker. International lenders included the Albertina, Vienna, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, the Musée de l’Orangerie, Paris, the Nahmad Collection, the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC, the Pinacoteca Agnelli, Turin, the Tate, London, the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

An exhibition of the Museum Barberini, Potsdam, and the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, under the patronage of the Embassy of the Italian Republic in Germany. The exhibition at the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart was on view from November 24, 2023 to April 1, 2024.

Cover image: Amedeo Modigliani: Reclining Nude (on the Left Side) (detail), 1917 © Nahmad Collection

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"A captivating show"

FAZ

"The Barberini has landed another coup: The Potsdam Museum has once again succeeded in creating an exhibition that is not only an art experience, but also sets new scientific standards"

Tagesspiegel

"Amedeo Modigliani's paintings celebrate the independent, modern woman who questions gender roles. This is what makes this major exhibition so topical."

Weltkunst

"It is an interesting move of this exhibition to look for the truly progressive in Modigliani's work in his relationship to women ... Through numerous portraits of women with the attributes of the new independence, from bobbed heads to sailor suits, the exhibition illustrates his sympathies for the feminism of his time."

SZ

"At the Barberini in Potsdam, we can be very close to this intensity, this obsession with which a stunning work was created. We immerse ourselves in the abruptly ended work of an artist to whom legend unilaterally attributes an excessive, dissolute life ... a unique retrospective."

Berliner Zeitung

"We know him as a painter of unfathomable eyes: Modigliani also created a monument to the modern woman - although he himself loved more than tragically. A joint exhibition by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the Museum Barberini in Potsdam shows that Modigliani's interest in the figure was by no means backward-looking, but on the contrary: ahead of its time."

art

"Drug-addicted womanizer and the last bohemian: There are many clichés about Modigliani's life. The Museum Barberini clears them up ... with a spectacular Modigliani exhibition."

Berliner Morgenpost

"He was a pioneer and campaigner for the modern woman. His portraits of women are the focus of the exhibition."

rbb

"For the first time, Modigliani is honored as a portraitist of a new type of woman from 1910 onwards and a forerunner of New Objectivity, who painted his models confidently and at eye level. The show deliberately breaks with clichés."

Jüdische Allgemeine

"Amedeo Modigliani is shown at the Museum Barberini in a range that is spectacular and almost feminist."

MAZ

"Modigliani's works were regarded as a symbol of male voyeurism. The new exhibition at the Museum Barberini now does away with Modigliani's image."

B.Z.

"The works of the Jewish painter, which once caused scandals, are highly sought-after loans. But there are many more stars on display at the Barberini. The exhibition organizers also include other European artists such as Klimt, Picasso, Schiele and Modersohn-Becker."

tagesschau.de

"A rewarding experience!"

inforadio

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