Busto rosso

Around 1913 Modigliani had almost stopped painting. What obsessed him instead was sculpture: he was carving long-necked stone heads and caryatids, those columnar female figures that seem to hold up a building, inspired by the African and ancient art he was studying in Paris. The dust of the stonework was bad for his weak lungs, and he could rarely afford the materials, so many of the caryatids survive only as drawings and painted studies like this one. Here the figure glows in warm yellows and orange against a blue ground, her body simplified into the curves he was cutting in limestone. Within a year the stone had defeated him and he went back to the brush for good.