Valene Tolman 
Modigliani: Drawings 

Amedeo Modigliani was the quintessence of a tragic artist. He contracted tuberculosis at an early age, which may be one reason why he so willingly engaged in self-destructive behavior. Living in Paris, he had affairs with women, drank heavily, smoked hashish, and drank absinthe. He was against all of the excesses of a Bourgeois lifestyle, and thus stripped them from his life, even destroying paintings that he had made in his earlier years. Modigliani sketched furiously, sometimes drawing over 100 sketches in a day, but many of his works were lost, given away, or in some cases, destroyed by Modigliani himself. His favorite subject was by far the human form, characterized an elongation and mask-like faces, and his work is so unlike any other of his time that it still defies classification.