拍品專文
The rapid, open mark-making and vital immediacy of Nudo femminile seduto reveals the fundamental place that drawing had in the genesis of Modigliani's pictorial language. His unique artistic vision found its definition by exploring the functional power of line and it was through studies such as the present work that he found new solutions to abstract formal issues. This concise yet elegant rendering acts to crystallize the female form into purely plastic, linear values whilst retaining a sense of human sentiment and the vitality of life. Indeed, the model's languidly tilted head and slightly parted mouth lends her a sensual grace that anticipates the great nude paintings with which Modigliani is most frequently associated and for which he is most celebrated.
In the early stages of his career, from about 1910 to 1914, Modigliani hoped to establish his reputation as a sculptor marking the transition from sculpting back to painting by incessant drawing. The intensity of this preoccupation with sculptural form is revealed in the robust shapes of this seated model, whose limbs have been refined by searching pencil lines into clear, precise volumes. An interest in the effects of proportion and relief can also be seen in the selective use of incisive, bold marks and blocks of background shadow. This technique of managing solid and void also appears in a related drawing of a crouching nude from 1914, in which the contours of the body are similarly defined by dark zones of watercolour (Nu Assis, 1914, Museum of Modern Art, New York, inv. 29.1932).
Whilst the subject of the nude evokes the great tradition of classical European art, the elemental simplicity of this figure represents a distillation of an eclectic range of visual references, including Cézanne's complex sense of space and mass, the abstract purism of Brancusi and the expressive energy of African and Oceanic tribal art. These influences are particularly evident in the planar distortions of the facial features and the blank, inscrutable eyes that lend the figure a detached air of self-absorption. In this way, Nudo femminile seduto fulfills Modigliani's aim to synthesize objective fact and individual characterization with an entirely original and personal mode of expression.
In the early stages of his career, from about 1910 to 1914, Modigliani hoped to establish his reputation as a sculptor marking the transition from sculpting back to painting by incessant drawing. The intensity of this preoccupation with sculptural form is revealed in the robust shapes of this seated model, whose limbs have been refined by searching pencil lines into clear, precise volumes. An interest in the effects of proportion and relief can also be seen in the selective use of incisive, bold marks and blocks of background shadow. This technique of managing solid and void also appears in a related drawing of a crouching nude from 1914, in which the contours of the body are similarly defined by dark zones of watercolour (Nu Assis, 1914, Museum of Modern Art, New York, inv. 29.1932).
Whilst the subject of the nude evokes the great tradition of classical European art, the elemental simplicity of this figure represents a distillation of an eclectic range of visual references, including Cézanne's complex sense of space and mass, the abstract purism of Brancusi and the expressive energy of African and Oceanic tribal art. These influences are particularly evident in the planar distortions of the facial features and the blank, inscrutable eyes that lend the figure a detached air of self-absorption. In this way, Nudo femminile seduto fulfills Modigliani's aim to synthesize objective fact and individual characterization with an entirely original and personal mode of expression.