Raimondo 1915

Amedeo Modigliani made this painting, Raimondo, with oil on canvas. Look at how Modigliani’s mark-making is so distinctive, a kind of dance between intention and accident that feels very contemporary. The surface has a real materiality, you can see the physicality of the paint and how he's layered it. There is a really striking combination of opaque and transparent areas in the painting. See the way he's modeled Raimondo's face with those subtle modulations of tone, and then the flatness of his eye, it’s all about how these things relate to each other. Check out the slightly wonky line of the nose and how it gives the painting an edgy feel. You can see echoes of Cezanne in this work, especially in the way he flattens and abstracts the figure. But Modigliani’s painting is very much his own thing, all about the poetry of feeling, and the beauty of imperfection.