The last years and the death
The latter part of Amedeo Modigliani’s life are accompanied by Jeanne Hébuterne. They met in 1917, at Colarossi Academy which they both attended. indeed Jeanne is a painter too. Their deep love was interrupted only by death.
In 1918 the first solo exhibition of Modigliani was held in Paris, at the Berthe Weill Gallery. It lasted a few days and was object of scandal: in fact it attracted attention for the presence of nude paintings displayed in the gallery window that caused its immediate closure.
In these years there is a serious deterioration in his health. Probably alcohol and drugs, as well as the poor conditions in which he often lived, negatively affected his health. Certainly the assumptions of the serious diseases suffered from a young age could not give a lucky future to the artist.
Following his patron and collector Zborowksi, in 1918 he moved for a short stay in the South of France to try to treat his health (the symptoms of tuberculosis were worsening). There he dedicated himself to painting, realizing numerous portrait and some landscapes, a genre very distant from him and on which he had not tried since the times of the school of Micheli in Livorno. In the same year Jeanne, the daughter of Amedeo and Jeanne, was born.
When he returned to Paris his health continued to get worse. He died on 24th January, 1920. The next day Jeanne Hébuterne, pregnant with Modigliani’s second child, threw herself out the window and died too.
The two lovers were initially buried in two different places but, in 1930, Jeanne’s remains were transferred at the cemetery of Père-Lachaise and the two now rest next to each other.
