The career of the Italian-born painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani was brief, but prolific. This catalogue accompanies the retrospective exhibition organized by LaM - Lille Métropole Musée d'Art Moderne, d'Art Contemporain et d'Art Brut, which boasts one of France's finest public collections of work by the famous artist of Montparnasse : no fewer than six paintings, seven drawings, and a rare marble sculpture, all acquired by Roger Dutilleul and Jean Masurel, founders of the museum's collection of modern art.
Echoing the exhibition's layout, the catalogue Amedeo Modigliani : The Inner Eye revisits Modigliani's output, focusing on three aspects of his life and work. The authors turn the spotlight on the years during which he was interested mainly in sculpture, examining his artistic dialogue with ancient and non-Western art and quest for a "synthesizing," spiritual art. As World War I broke out, Modigliani was developing his style as a portraitist, using as models the artists making up the free-spirited community on the fringes of society to which he himself belonged. This volume also explores the special relationship between Modigliani's work and the collector Roger Dutilleul ; the two met in 1917, less than three years before the artist's premature death.
The catalogue includes approximately one hundred reproductions of paintings, drawings, and sculptures by Modigliani, alongside works by Constantin Brancusi, Pablo Picasso, Jacques Lipchitz, Chaïm Soutine, Moïse Kisling, and Henri Laurens, among others.