Summary: A profile of the celebrated modernist artist includes coverage of his upbringing as a Sephardic Jewish youth by a impoverished Italian family, his considerable training, and the ways in which his private battles with tuberculosis shaped his achievements.
Booklist Reviews
*Starred Review* With a keen nose for canards and unprecedented access to primary materials, exemplary biographer Secrest (Duveen, 2004) revisits the life and achievemen of artist Modigliani, who worked under a death sentence she believes he kept secret. Tuberculosis raged across Europe during Modigliani's brief life, infecting him when he was a book-loving, artistic teen in Livorno, Italy, and claiming his life in 1920, when he was only 35. Based on an intriguing set of clues she energetically delineates, Secrest theorizes about how the handsome, life-loving, ambitious artist concealed his condition. As for his notorious drunkenness, Secrest suggests that the alcohol helped control his persistent coughing. With this template in place, every aspect of Modigliani's life takes on new meaning, including his iconic portraits, which derived from his deep fascination with masks, the perfect symbol for his own camouflage. Modigliani's depictions of women constitute some of the world's most evocative masterpieces, and women close to him dominate Secrest's account, from his smart, cultured mother, Eugénie, to his lovers, the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, writer and journalist Beatrice Hastings, and, tragically, the "enchanting" art student, Jeanne Hébuterne. Secrest's new insights into Hébuterne, her suicide, and the struggles of her and Modigliani's daughter complete this astute and gripping biography. Copyright 2011 Booklist Reviews.
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