Friday, September 14, 2018

Arty Farty Friday ~ Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani was both sculptor and painter. I much prefer his sculptures -they have an almost African or Egyptian look.
For me, his portraits (which form the bulk of his best known work) all appear much alike. His subjects have the same elongated oval faces and long necks, they stare back at you with vacant expressions, they could easily all be related, so alike do they appear. Occasionally one can see a person in real life who resembles a Modigliani portrait, it's an odd sensation - a feeling that you've met them somewhere before. Google Image displays many examples, HERE.


This Italian-born artist was the stereotypical, romantic and poverty-stricken bohemian who pursued his art amid a haze of drugs, alcohol and dissolution in the Paris of the early 20th century. It has been said that he worked as wildly as he lived, in spite of his excesses in the alcohol and drugs department - not to mention his women.One biography states " It seems his whole life was a series of protests: against the bourgeois smugness of his family of businessmen, and against a society that failed to recognize and reward his talent."

He died in squalor in January 1920 at the age of 35, discovered by a neighbour. He was in the final throes of tubercular meningitis, bed strewn with bottles of alcohol and cans of sardines, his mistress Jeanne Hébuterne nursing him. She hadn't thought to call a doctor, but her devotion to her lover was so great that, two days after his death, she threw herself backwards from a fifth-floor window. She was nine months pregnant with their second child.



Modigliani was born on 12 July 1884 in Livorno, Italy at 8.10 am (Time according to Astrotheme)


His Cancer stellium of Sun, Mercury and Venus, together with Moon in Pisces indicate an ultra-sensitive, emotional character. Pluto and Saturn in Gemini are in 10th house of career. Neptune, planet of creativity and imagination is right at midheaven, if time of birth is accurate - the midheaven angle is one of the strongest positions in the chart. Neptune can also relate to addiction. It has been said that his excesses of drugs and alcohol did not diminish "his great desire to work" - the two planets in 10th house relate to this trait. He had Neptune trine Uranus as had many of his contemporaries, but additionally Modigliani had natal Uranus and Mars within 4 degrees of each other on cusp of first/second houses. Firmicus gives the following interpretation of Mars in the first house :"makes men bold, clever, emotional; wanderers, unstable in every way;... whatever they undertake flows from their hands and their inheritance is wasted..."



 Self portrait

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