Diego Rivera

by 1914

Gives up sculpture for painting

By 1914 Modigliani abandons sculpting and focuses solely on painting, a move precipitated by the difficulty of acquiring sculptural materials once the war breaks out, and by his physical debilitation.

from 1914

Drink, drugs and the advance of tuberculosis

From about 1914 Modigliani’s use of drink and drugs intensifies; after years of remission and recurrence the symptoms of his tuberculosis worsen, signalling that the disease has reached an advanced stage.

June 1914

Beatrice Hastings

Modigliani meets the talented and eccentric Englishwoman Beatrice Hastings, a poet and columnist for The New Age, who becomes his companion, muse and favourite model: he devotes 14 portraits to her. The relationship lasts about two years.

1916

Léopold Zborowski, friend and dealer

Modigliani befriends the Polish poet and art dealer Léopold Zborowski and his wife Anna; in the artist’s final years Zborowski is his primary dealer and friend. He lends Modigliani his apartment, supplies models and painting materials, and pays him between fifteen and twenty francs a day.

spring 1917

Meets Jeanne Hébuterne

In the spring of 1917 the Ukrainian sculptor Chana Orloff introduces Modigliani to a 19-year-old art student, Jeanne Hébuterne, who has posed for Foujita. Her conservative, devoutly Catholic family renounces her for her liaison with a Jew, but she soon lives with Modigliani anyway and becomes a principal subject of his art.

3 December 1917

His first solo exhibition — and the police

An exhibition of Modigliani’s nudes opens at Berthe Weill’s gallery in Paris, his first solo show in the city. The gallery stands opposite a police station, and the officers, outraged by the nudes, force the show to close on its opening day.