Portrait of the Painter Moïse Kisling Painting by Amedo Modigalini

Famous Art work & Drawing by Amedo Modigalini - Portrait of the Painter Moïse Kisling

Portrait of the Painter Moise Kisling

Modigliani abandoned sculpting in 1914 and came back to painting. He settled in Montparnasse in Paris and painted a number of portraits of his artist acquaintances and friends including Soutine, Moise Kisling, Picasso, Max Jacob and Jean Cocteau.

In 1916, Modigliani painted this portrait of the Polish artist Moise Kisling, one of his closest friends. Moise Kisling was in Montmartre from 1910 and later moved to Montparnasse. At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for service inn the French Foreign Legion and in 1915, he was deeply wounded in the Battle of Somme, for which he was awarded French citizenship.

Kisling was part of the renowned artistic community gathered in Montparnasse. In 1913, he started a studio in Montparnasse where he lived for next 27 years. Later Modigliani lived in the same building. Kisling’s style of landscape painting is similar to that of Marc Chagall. He was a master at depicting female body. His surreal nudes and portraits are well known.

Modigliani’s portrait practice internalized the iconoclasm and Cubism and the liberating power of Primitivism at the same time and it affirmed the commitment to the conventional function of portraits – the adumbration and celebration of the named individual. The power of his portrait lies in their capacity to render the tension between generic and specific, the mask and the face and the endemic and the particular.

There is something Asiatic about Kisling’s face with the smooth olive tinted skin, its beautiful black eyes shaded in long lashes and it’s firmly outlined red mouth. The quivering nostrils of his small well shaped nose revealed the turbulent and passionate character of the artist.

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