Lot Essay
Modigliani first became familiar with African art around 1909 while mingling with Picasso, Derain, Vlaminck, his friend Max Jacob, and other artists who had studios in or frequented the Bateau-Lavoir in Montmartre. The chief influence on Modigliani's painting since 1906 had been the example of Cézanne, but the impact of African sculpture encouraged Modigliani to turn increasingly to sculpture. This process is clearly reflected in drawings of this period.
In 1912 Modigliani exhibited at the Salon d'Automne a group of seven sculptures under the all-inclusive and revealing title Têtes, ensemble décoratif. A comparison of these and others of the same period with their preliminary drawings confirms Vitali's judgement that "Modigliani the new draftsman was born from Modigliani the sculptor." Indeed, in his pursuit of clear surfaces, precise volumes, and continuous lines curving in space, and his recovery through line of the values of depth, the interlocking of solids and voids which by their simplified plastic conventions determine the "deformations" of Gabonese and Congolese sculpture, Modigliani reduced line to its utmost simplicity and discovered, as Ceroni says, "the value of pure line, traced always without hesitation, without pentimenti, perfect and at once original." The example of Brancusi's drawings, tautly rendering the perfection of volume in what John Russell has called a 'ferocious exclusion of the irrelevant,' must have been of no small help to him, as was also the lean, free synthesis achieved by the Cubists. The old arabesques of the English and Viennese fin de siècle, as well as Cézanne's volumetric syntheses, were brought to new and unexpected results in this exercise in the formal interpretation of primitive art. (F. Russoli, Modigliani Drawings and Sketches, New York, 1969, pp. X and XIII)
In 1912 Modigliani exhibited at the Salon d'Automne a group of seven sculptures under the all-inclusive and revealing title Têtes, ensemble décoratif. A comparison of these and others of the same period with their preliminary drawings confirms Vitali's judgement that "Modigliani the new draftsman was born from Modigliani the sculptor." Indeed, in his pursuit of clear surfaces, precise volumes, and continuous lines curving in space, and his recovery through line of the values of depth, the interlocking of solids and voids which by their simplified plastic conventions determine the "deformations" of Gabonese and Congolese sculpture, Modigliani reduced line to its utmost simplicity and discovered, as Ceroni says, "the value of pure line, traced always without hesitation, without pentimenti, perfect and at once original." The example of Brancusi's drawings, tautly rendering the perfection of volume in what John Russell has called a 'ferocious exclusion of the irrelevant,' must have been of no small help to him, as was also the lean, free synthesis achieved by the Cubists. The old arabesques of the English and Viennese fin de siècle, as well as Cézanne's volumetric syntheses, were brought to new and unexpected results in this exercise in the formal interpretation of primitive art. (F. Russoli, Modigliani Drawings and Sketches, New York, 1969, pp. X and XIII)