The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amedeo Modigliani (Pushkin Collection)

The life of the painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Consisting of a series of vignettes, mostly set in the painter's studio and peopled by his lover Jeanne Hébuterne (who ended her own life the day after Modigliani's death), the prostitutes who were his occasional models and several Bohemian visitors, the novel spans the last months of Modigliani's life, evoking the strange workings of the painter's troubled and often drug-fuelled mind and its expression in his paintings, ultimately succeeding in conveying something of the intense artistic life of Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. From the Trade Paperback edition. The life of the modernist painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Spanning the last months of Modigliani's life, this evocative novel conjures up the strange workings of the painter's troubled - and often drug-fuelled - mind, and the manner in which his eccentricity expressed itself in his art. Colic's evocative novel captures the full essence of Modigliani's Bohemian lifestyle, and the colourful visitors who came and went through his Paris studio: among them his lover, Jeanne Hébuterne, and the prostitutes who occasionally modelled for him; and succeeds in conveying something of the intense artistic life of Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century.

The life of the painter Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was chaotic and tragically brief. Spanning the last months of Modigliani’s life, conjuring up the strange workings of the painter’s troubled and often drug-fuelled mind and its expression in his paintings, this novel succeeds in conveying something of the intense artistic life of Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century.

In a series of expressionist vignettes, Velibor Colic's The Uncannily Strange and Brief Life of Amedeo Modigliani paints a compelling portrait of a chaotic and tragically brief career, cut short by drugs and disease.