Amedeo Modigliani - Reclining nude 1917
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Reclining nude 1917
60x92cm oil/canvas
Osaka City Museum of Modern Art, Japan
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
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From Osaka City Museum of Modern Art:
A naked woman with wet fervent eyes is smiling as if she shows off her physical beauty. In western art, a naked woman usually sets her eyes off the spectator to be seen from men as a passive existence. In this regard, this naked woman is unique because she stares back at us straight in the eye, same with La Maja desnuda (Naked Maja) by Goya or Olympia by Manet. Modigliani, a painter based in Montparnasse, is well-known for melancholic portraits, but during the years around 1917, he intensively painted naked women advised by Zborowski, an art dealer. The characteristics of his nudes can be found where he concentrated on expressing contour and physical beauty of women while eliminating narratives from the painting. It is considered by specialists that this work was showed at his once-in-a-lifetime solo exhibition in 1917. Some years after Modigliani's death, it was purchased by a Japanese art critic, Shigetaro Fukushima, in Paris and exhibited in Japan for the first time in 1934.