Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani grew up in a Sephardic Jewish family in Livorno and studied the art of antiquity and the Renaissance before moving to Paris in 1906. From 1909 to 1914 he worked mainly on carved stone heads, in contact with Brâncuși. He then returned to painting: portraits and nudes with long necks, oval, masklike faces and blank almond eyes. Poor and ill for much of his life, he died of tubercular meningitis at 35, and fame came only afterwards.