Young Woman of the People

At the turn of the century, African Art began to be imported into Europe and by the mid 1910s, it was flooding Paris. So many of the era’s greatest artists, from Picasso to Cezanne, were inspired by the sculptural, ethereal faces of these masks, and each interpreted the aesthetic philosophy in a different way. Modigliani, a young Italian painter who was to die at the age of 35 with little commercial success, combined an inspiration from the masks with a deep understanding of the antiquity and Italian Renaissance paintings that he had studied as an adolescent. The resulting works are surreal and modern, elongated figures with his trademark almond faces seem to exist outside of time, the women painted become a bridge between centuries and continents. It was only five years before his death that the synthesis of his two founding influences reached its apex and created one of the most distinctive styles of portraiture. Modigliani’s paintings are piercing and uncanny, works of a strange nature that lure you in.