Reclining Nude (Le Grand Nu)

When Amedeo Modigliani exhibited his nude paintings at the Berthe Weill gallery in Paris in December 1917, a crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside. Police arrived within hours and ordered the show closed. The offense was pubic hair: Modigliani had painted his models with a frankness that even bohemian Paris found unacceptable. This Reclining Nude came from that infamous exhibition, depicting a woman stretched across warm red-brown bedding, her body angled toward the viewer, her dark eyes meeting ours directly.

Modigliani developed a visual language unlike anyone else in early 20th-century Paris. His nudes feature elongated necks, almond-shaped eyes, and gently distorted proportions that draw on African sculpture, Italian Renaissance painting, and the geometric simplifications of Cubism. Warm flesh tones range from peach to terracotta, modeled with subtle gradations rather than harsh shadows. The Expressionist distortions lend his figures an otherworldly grace.

The Italian-born artist lived in poverty for most of his short life, trading drawings for drinks in Montparnasse cafés while struggling with addiction and tuberculosis. He died of tubercular meningitis in January 1920 at age 35. His companion Jeanne Hébuterne, nine months pregnant, threw herself from a fifth-floor window the following day. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York now holds this painting.