Ten nudes painted by Amedeo Modigliani, the largest group ever seen in the UK, will go on show in an exhibition dedicated to the Italian artist due to open at Tate Modern in London later this year (23 November-2 April 2018). These include Seated Nude (1917), on loan from the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Antwerp, Reclining Nude (1919) from the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and Female Nude (around 1916) from the Courtauld Gallery in London.
The latter work was included in a 1917 exhibition of the artist’s works at Berthe Weill gallery in Paris, which was shut down by the police on the grounds of indecency. At a press briefing held today (26 June), Nancy Ireson, the exhibition's co-curator, said that the nudes stand out because Modigliani showed his models with pubic hair, a move considered unorthodox at the time.
However, another painting titled Reclining Nude (Nu Couché, 1917-18) that fetched $170.4m (£112.7m) at Christie’s New York in 2015, a record price for the artist, is not included. The buyer was identified as the Chinese billionaire Liu Yiqian and his wife, Wang Wei.
Other highlights in the show include a series of sculptures, including Head (around 1910-11) on loan from Princeton University, and portraits of artists including Picasso (1915), Juan Gris (1915) and Diego Rivera (1914). The French writer Jean Cocteau (1916) was not keen on his portrait, Ireson said, adding that the work reflects “playfulness; there is a sense of caricature”.
The exhibition re-assesses Modigliani's work and life, Ireson added. “What has changed is the attitude to his lifestyle,” she said. “It is well documented that he dabbled in substance abuse but the shock [reaction to that] has changed. A re-balancing has come through and we’re putting out a more nuanced view of the artist.”
A work from the Tate collection, The Little Peasant (around 1918), featured in the Exhibition of French Art 1914-1919 organised by Mansard Gallery at Heal’s department store in London. The show, held in 1919, also included works by Derain and Matisse. The Tate show, which will include a special virtual reality section evoking early 20th-century Paris, is supported by the London-based collectors Maryam and Edward Eisler and Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
The Tate exhibition is one of several planned. The US scholar Kenneth Wayne is organising a show of Modigliani’s works at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia scheduled for 2020, the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death. Wayne is also planning a “variation to the traditional catalogue raisonné” on the artist. In addition, an exhibition of early drawings by Modigliani is due to open at the Jewish Museum in New York this autumn (15 September-4 February 2018).