​Growing up in the coastal town of Livorno, Italy, Amedeo Modigliani had suffered from Tuberculosis and Typhoid, which almost killed him on several occasions. Each time, his mother Eugenie Garsin nurtured him back to health, at the same time nurturing his talent for painting. She took him to Italy’s greatest museums so he could study and copy classic works from well-known Renaissance, Florentine and Neapolitan painters. While symptoms of tuberculosis continued to plague the young man, he restlessly engaged in spiritualism, philosophy, and literature, but painted vigorously. Sadly, virtually no works exist from those very early years. The truth is, Modigliani really wanted to be a sculptor, and painted only for  lack of something better to do.
     When he first arrived in Paris, in his early twenties, Amedeo rented a shed built of tile and wood on the corner of Rue Lepic, adjacent to a dilapidated building at 13 Rue Ravignan called The Bateau-Lavoir, a haven for soon-to-be famous artists who gathered for meals, drinks, and intellectual banter in the neighborhood of Montmartre.
    It is unclear whether Modigliani’s increasing consumption of booze, drugs, and women was the result of his curious nature, a need to investigate sources for artistic inspiration, or to ward off his inner demons. Perhaps it was the stress of poverty, or disappointment with his life that led him into a downward spiral; perhaps he felt alone, a stranger disenfranchised, or depressed. One day, the painter Henri Doucet brought Modigliani to 7, Rue du Delta, a house rented by Dr. Paul Alexandre, a 26-year-old well-to-do dermatologist who was also an art enthusiast. The house soon became a meeting place for amateur theatrical performances, painting, and conversation. During the next six years, the good doctor did much to support  Modigliani’s work, amassing more than 400 drawings, 25 fabulous paintings and several stone sculptures.
     
Learn more about Modigliani’s legend, and his beginnings in Livorno in Henri Colt’s new book, Becoming Modigliani.

​​Amedeo Modigliani arrived in Paris in the fall of 1906. Ambitious, handsome, and charismatic, the twenty-two-year-old avoided the more expensive yet prestigious neighborhoods like the Latin Quarter and settled in Montmartre. In the early 1900s, this neighborhood was outside city limits and free of city taxes. Its open wastelands and numerous small vineyards, some of which still exist, were filled with inexpensive eateries and cabarets such as the Moulin Rouge, Le Chat Noir, and Le Lapin Agile. The village’s shacks, rundown wooden homes, and makeshift gardens were left largely untouched by Baron Haussmann’s ambitious plans for the city’s urbanization and reconstruction.
     Downtown Paris had maintained its fin de siècle splendor and was hailed as a jewel of modern Europe. The Eiffel Tower was the capital’s emblem. In its shadow, almost three million inhabitants roamed through one thousand kilometers of small streets, alleys, and boulevards lined with ten thousand lampposts, half a million electric lights and dozens of art nouveau subway entrances. With an increasing number of foreign artists, writers, and intellectuals streaming into a city already famous for its history and physical beauty, Paris was the cultural center of the western world.
     Modigliani was a veritable street artist of his times. He sketched constantly, but he also drank absinthe. With an alcohol content as high as ninety percent, this sweet, tasting emerald-green liquor known as la fée verte (the green fairy), was popular since the 1870s. Absinthe’s bitter, licorice-like taste and reported effects of euphoria without drunkenness were caused by mixing wormwood, a plant used for medicinal purposes since 3000 B.C., with alcohol. The young Italian bourgeois painter soon became a rebellious bohemian who could be seen staggering drunkenly from place to place with Montmartre native and fellow artist, Maurice Utrillo. He bartered sketches for a glass of wine or a meal. He gave drawings to friends and acquaintances who did not keep them, traded paintings for rent, and had a tendency, unless restrained, to remove his clothes when drunk.
            Learn more about Modigliani’s legend, but also how his life was affected by love, illness, the events of the Great War (1914-1918) in Colt’s new book, Becoming Modigliani.