In conversation: A New Look at Modigliani
Modigliani was a European artist in the broadest and most innovative sense. Raised in a liberal, French-Italian family in the port city of Livorno, the painter moved to Paris in 1906 after studying art in Venice and Florence. In the avant-garde environment of Montmartre and Montparnasse, he painted portraits of gallery owners, friends, and fellow artists such as Pablo Picasso, Chaïm Soutine and Diego Rivera and caused a proper scandal with his nude paintings at his first solo show at the Galerie Berthe Weill in Paris in 1917. In an era of the dissolution of form, abstraction, and the beginning of the women's rights movement, Modigliani positioned himself as a pioneer of modernism.
In conjunction with the exhibition Modigliani: Modern Gazes, Ortrud Westheider, Director of the Museum Barberini, traces Modigliani's artistic development in this video and offers insight into the avant-garde environment of early 20th-century Paris.
