AMEDEO MODIGLIANI Lot n° 23

Amedeo Modigliani Chaïm Soutine assis à une table 1917 Pencil on paper 44,1 x 29/28,6 cm Signed in pencil lower right 'Modigliani'. Parisot 2006 vol. III, 162/17 Provenance Jacques Dubourg, Paris; private collection, Paris; Augstein Collection, Hamburg; private collection Southern Germany Literature Osvalo Patani, Amadeo Modigliani, Catalogo Generale Disegni, Milan 1994, p. 187, no. 303 with ill. ("Chaïm Soutine seduto a un tavolo") Amadeo Modigliani was a portrait painter. While his nudes often dominate the public's perception of Modigliani's art, the portraits of Parisian painters, poets, sculptors, art collectors, and gallery owners represent the core of his oeuvre. "For Modigliani, it must have been a very elementary desire, something like a basic instinct, to appropriate the people of his surroundings by painting and drawing, whereby it was by no means decisive whether they were particularly close to him." - is how Werner Schmalenbach sums up Modigliani's deep interest in people. (Amadeo Modigliani, Aust. cat. Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen 1991, p. 25). On canvas and on paper he portrayed important and less important people of his circle and with these works, probably without having intended it, he became the chronicler of the bohemian scene of Montparnasse, which so decisively shaped the art of these years. Chaïm Soutine, depicted in our drawing, was one of Amadeo Modigliani's closest friends, as were the artists Moïse Kisling, Jacques Lipchitz, Ossip Zadkine and the art dealer Max Jacob. He portrayed Soutine several times, for instance in three large-format paintings, today in the collections of the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and the National Gallery of Art, Washington, among others. The two artists are not only connected by a friendly relationship, but, according to Werner Schmalenbach, also by a special mental closeness (cf. op. cit., p. 36). This connection is palpable in our virtuoso drawing, where Modigliani captures Soutine's wild boyishness and striking physiognomy in a highly reduced yet clearly accentuated manner.