Caryatid Painting by Amed0 Modigliani

Famous Art work & Drawing by Amedo Modigalini - Caryatid

Caryatid – Painting

Modigliani developed the components of his personal pictorial language – reduction, linearity and abstraction – through his sculpture. One can identify these characteristics in the caryatids drawings of Modigliani. He used this motif from Antiquity and developed his linear style whereby the softly curving contours and two dimensional pictures became his trademark.

Modigliani used fluid curving lines, which gave the forms their bearing and shape. In their muted coloring, his caryatid pictures had an affinity to Cubism.

In this “Caryatid – Painting” of 1912, the artist has used only brown and dark-grey tones. The sketch-like elements of this picture are coupled with a few precise lines out of which the female figure develops resulting in a successful contrast between static and dynamic, between open and closed.

The figure reminds the observer, of the mythological origin of caryatids. Modigliani’s caryatid does not bear a material load and hence need not be supported by a sturdy base. Her raised arms and bowed head merely support the upper edge of the picture and the way the figure is seated appears unstable. The figure has something intangible about her.

In her austere grace she is completely distanced from the real world and is at one and the same time a painting and a sculpture, a stone goddess of the beauty of painting

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