Amedeo Modigliani. The Inner Eye

This richly illustrated book explores Amadeo Modigliani's work as sculptor and avant-garde portraitiste as much as his brief and productive career through Roger Dutilleul collection.

The book considers the singular relationship between this passionate amateur, who became one of the most important collectors of Modigliani's work, and the artist whom he met in 1918, less than two years before his premature death.

Amadeo Modigliani displays the dialogue that the young Italian artist maintained with antic and extra-Western sculptures from 1910 to 1914. It specifically highlights studies of heads and caryatides, and Modigliani's patient analysis work, such as modulating facial features. Health and financial conditions forced Modigliani to renounce sculpture in 1914. The second part features portraits of Modigliani's friends, also actors of the Parisian avant-garde from Picasso's circle, such as the writer Max Jacob, the merchant Paul Guillaume, Moïse Kisling, Viking Eggeling, Jacques Lipchitz, Henri Laurens and Léopold Survage. Beyond friendship, these portraits reveal artistic exchanges, where painters and sculptors became Modigliani's models. In his last years, Modigliani perfected his portrait's style, which made him successful: the frame widens, his palette lightens under the influence of Cézanne. In 1918, he met Dutilleul, who purchased around thirty of his paintings and numerous drawings between 1918 and 1946 and posed as his model in 1919.

Contents: Introduction; 4 essays: Modigliani and the art of distant countries; Artists' portraits; Roger Dutilleul and Modigliani; Modigliani and art market. Androgyny in Modigliani's art; Modigliani's library; Modigliani at Nice; Illustrated chronology; Modigliani's models' biographies..

Published to accompany exhibitions at: LaM, villeneuve d'ascq, February 27th to June 5th 2016 - Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest, June 28th to October 2nd 2016 - Ateneum Museum of Art, Helsinki, 28th October 2016 to February 5th 2017.