Modigliani: Young Woman Of The People

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Amedeo Modigliani: Young Woman of the People
Amedeo Modigliani painted Young Woman of the People two years before his death in 1918. He used oil on a canvas that is 39 ¼ x 25 ¼ inches. Like many of his other portraits, Modigliani uses asymmetrical balance to give a certain perception of the subject to the viewer. The picture frames in the upper left corner balances the heavy bed frame in the lower right corner. He has three implied lines moving gradually up from left to right. The lines force the viewers attention to the subject from either side of the painting. He places emphasis on the woman’s face, hands, and forearms using these lines and by tinting them to contrast with the plain, shaded background. The viewer notices her strong forearms and hands because Modigliani brings them up to the foreground. He repeatedly uses oval shapes to depict her form and her bed while complimenting them with the square frames in the upper left corner. His painterly brushstrokes blur and shadow the background to bring sharp focus on the smooth, tight strokes used for the subject. The earth tones Modigliani uses for the painting imply a subject in a simple life. He blends most of the colors, the only solid area of color being the woman’s shirt
Modigliani professed himself to be a sculptor. Due to tuberculosis, he was restricted from working with stone for most of his short life. Most of his surviving work is oil paint on canvas, including Young Woman of the People. Unlike most of his contemporaries, Modigliani had a style almost all his own. One could claim small inspirations from the Impressionist artists Paul Cézanne and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, or even from the Belgian Art Nouveau painter, George Minne, but Modlgliani can be said to have fathered modern art. He incorporates a few techniques from Symbolist painters later on, such as the visionary role of his sitters’ eyes and the expression beyond individualism, all in his later portr...