Modigliani's portraits from Grenoble on display at Magnani-Rocca Foundation

The Magnani-Rocca Foundation in Mamiano di Traversetolo is hosting the exhibition Modigliani, Works from the Musée de Grenoble from March 27 to July 4, 2021, which will feature six works by Amedeo Modigliani: the 1917 painting Femme au col blanc, which depicts Lunia Czechowska, wife of Modigliani’s childhood friend Léopold Zborowski, art dealer and patron, and five pencil portraits of figures from Paris in the 1910s, where Modigliani moved leaving his Livorno home and where he was at the center of the art scene, at the time at the international avant-garde.

The works on display thanks to the collaboration with the Musée de Grenoble intend to give the public an understanding of the relationship between drawing and painting in Modigliani and to acquaint them with the main cultural references from the point of view of a portrait painter.

For Modigliani, the portrait represents the only possible means of expression of the artist’s creative fury, as well as the vital means of externalizing his anxiety to interweave a relational exchange with other beings. Starting from a fascination with the stylistic essentiality of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Sienese tradition, the plastic qualities of sculpture and the stylization of the graphic line, Modigliani developed an original conception of the portrait, also taking into account the teaching of Paul Cézanne and African masks. The exhibition will feature important examples of Cézanne and Cézannean painting as well as an African mask to give a better understanding of artistic influences.

Masterpieces of French art from the period in which the artist lived and worked, which are part of the Magnani-Rocca Foundation’s collections (in addition to Cézanne, also Renoir, Monet, Matisse and Braque, as well as the Italian Severini), will give the public a broad view of the art scene of the time.

In addition to being a great painter, Modigliani was a great draughtsman, able to capture the sensibility and psychology of his portrayed subjects through a stroke that was both volumetric and two-dimensional at the same time. His portraits express the most intimate qualities of his subjects, like an inner mirror. His female portraits are the greatest examples of his artistic sensibility: the delicate features, the tapered and elegant necks have become identifying features of the painter’s own art, and Femme au col blanc is a splendid example.

The exhibition is curated by Stefano Roffi with the collaboration of Alice Ensabella.

For info: www.magnanirocca.it

Hours: Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturday, Sunday and holidays from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Tickets: 12 euros.

Pictured: Amedeo Modigliani, Femme au col blanc, detail (1917; oil on canvas)

Modigliani's portraits from Grenoble on display at Magnani-Rocca Foundation

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