Portrait of the Painter Moisè Kisling, 1915
Amedeo Modigliani - Oil on canvas - cm 37 × 29
The painting originally belonged to Paul Guillaume, art critic, dealer and discoverer of Modigliani, of whom he was, at the outset, the only collector. It arrived in Italy following the incredible success achieved by the artist’s retrospective at the Venice Biennale in 1930 and were acquired by Il Milione gallery in Milan. It entered the collection of Emilio Jesi immediately after the war.
Modigliani had moved definitively to Paris in 1909, where he joined the cultural circle linked to the figure of Guillaume Apollinaire. He produced the greater part of his work, made up chiefly of portraits, between 1915 and 1918, painting mostly his bohemian friends: among them the Portrait of Moïse Kisling, a Polish painter of Jewish origin and an intimate friend of the artist.
