Juan Gris

Amedeo Modigliani

1915 · Oil on canvas · Modern and Contemporary Art

Modigliani, who left Italy for Paris in 1906, is said to have met the Spanish artist Juan Gris at the apartment of writer and art patron Gertrude Stein in 1909 or 1910. At the time of this portrait, Gris was twenty-seven and Modigliani thirty. Although he was influenced by Cubist painters such as Gris, Modigliani also briefly worked in sculpture under the tutelage of Constantin Brancusi. By 1914 Modigliani was focused solely on painting, but he presented his subjects with simple contours, elongated forms, and spare, stylized features that parallel those in his three-dimensional art. He produced a prodigious body of work before dying of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-five.

Artist

Amedeo Modigliani

Date

1915

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

Modern and Contemporary Art

Credit line

Bequest of Miss Adelaide Milton de Groot (1876–1967), 1967