Portrait of Anna Zborowska 1917

Amedeo Modigliani made this portrait with oil on canvas and a restricted colour palette. Imagine him in the studio mixing his colours, maybe a bit gloomily, and the model Anna Zborowska posing patiently. What’s she thinking as he elongates her neck with confident brushstrokes, like a calligrapher? I see the rich, dark background is not just a flat plane but a field of soft brushstrokes. Modigliani was obsessed with a certain ideal of beauty, he was part of a conversation with other modernists, like Picasso and Brancusi, who were also mining archaic and so-called ‘primitive’ sources. The painting's surface is relatively smooth, but look closer, and you can see little ridges and valleys in the paint. Those small material details are important because they give us a sense of the artist's touch. Every artist has their own unique language, their own way of seeing and expressing the world. And that's what makes art so endlessly fascinating!