Amedeo Modigliani, Nude, 1917, Oil on canvas, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York

MADRID, SPAIN.-The exhibition Modigliani and his Times, which just opened, is another exhibition project jointly organised by the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and Fundación Caja Madrid. It brings together a total of 126 works with the aim of analysing the career of one of the great figures of 20th-century art: Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920), from the time of his arrival in Paris in 1906 up to his death. The principal innovation in this ambitious project is the fact that for the first time it will present Modigliani’s work in a direct dialogue with that of the great masters of the past who influenced him – Cézanne, Picasso and Brancusi – and with that of his friends in Montparnasse, including Marc Chagall, Jacques Lipchitz, Chaïm Soutine, Moïse Kisling, Ossip Zadkine, Tsugouharu Foujita and Jules Pascin.

A Dialogue with Masters and Friends - As an artist, Modigliani was open to the art of the leading avant-garde movements in Paris prior to World War I but at the same time he chose to remain apart from them. When his work is seen alongside that of his fellow artists – great names of art history as well as others who are now less well known or even forgotten but who played a role in European art of the early 20th century – it is possible to correctly appreciate Modigliani’s oeuvre. In the exhibition, his unique portraits, nudes, sculptures, drawings and a few rare landscapes are exhibited alongside examples of work by Gauguin, Cézanne, Picasso, Brancusi and Derain. This juxtaposition allows the visitor to appreciate not just influences, similarities and parallels but also casts new light on the artist by presenting his works within the context in which they were created, revealing their powerful, sophisticated and elegant nature.

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