Reclining Nude with Loose Hair

Modigliani painted this reclining nude in 1917, the year his one and only solo show opened at Berthe Weill's small Paris gallery in December. Within hours the police ordered it closed. The nudes in the window, frankly painted with body hair and none of the mythological cover that made nakedness respectable, were judged an offence to public decency. This is one of that run of long, warm-toned figures, the body stretched into a slow diagonal, the face a smooth oval with narrow eyes borrowed from the African and Cycladic carvings he loved. He never had another show in his lifetime. He died just over two years later, at 35.