Winter on the couch

Modigliani was the bohemian artist par excellence - his posthumous legend is famous and in stylistic terms he was an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists, but not part of their movement, he forms a bridge between the generation of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Art Deco painters of the 1920s. Unfortunately he died in his 30's, too much booze and drugs.
His father Flaminio was an unsuccessful entrepreneur who had a small money-changing business, and his mother, Eugenia, by far the stronger personality of the two, ran an experimental school. Amedeo Modigilani, in childhood nicknamed Dedo, was their fourth and youngest child. In 1898 the eldest son, Emmanuele, then aged twenty-six, was sentenced to six months imprisonment as an anarchist. Since these people were Jews, that might be somewhat of a surprise. Anyhow, I like his paintings, stark and straight but with much sensuality - something we need in winter days.