Ritratto di Paul Guillaume

Paris, 1916, deep in the war, and Modigliani was broke, drinking hard, and barely selling. One of the few people behind him was Paul Guillaume, a young dealer with a sharp eye who had begun handling his work. Modigliani painted him several times, and here he sets the sitter's name and the date straight into the background, scratched on like graffiti. Look at the eyes and you notice one is left a blank. Modigliani had a line ready for that: with one eye you look at the world, he said, and with the other you look at yourself. Guillaume would go on to build one of the great collections of modern art. Modigliani would be dead within four years, at 35.