The Red Girl by Amedeo Modigliani, also known as The Red Girl (Head of a Woman with Red Hair), is a work created in 1915 by the Italian painter, who became a naturalized French citizen.
Currently displayed in the permanent collection of the Galleria di Arte Moderna di Torino, the red girl was donated to the Piedmontese museum in 1961.
The Girl Who Tells Her Artist
Admiring her, she guides us into the soul of the artist and the passion he had for human figures in general and for female figures, of which he would create numerous portraits thanks to various muses and models.
Without paying attention to the rules of perspective, the red girl tells us about the most authentic and spontaneous Modigliani, while at the same time being precise in the execution of the painting, which, like every other, follows a specific stylistic model, never appearing cold or, worse, detached.
The red girl has a true soul despite her glassy eyes.
She is one of the most evident pictorial results of the artist’s complex sensitivity, who would be obsessed throughout his life with the representation of man and, above all, humanity.
Man is Worth Entire Worlds
In a letter from 1919 addressed to Leopold Zborowski, his art dealer, Amedeo Modigliani wrote, “man is a world that sometimes is worth entire worlds.”
Here, in so few words, he confesses to his friend and to all those who in the centuries to come will have the fortune to admire his works, finally recognized as masterpieces and displayed in the most important museums in the world.
A misunderstood genius, in short, judged by most of his contemporaries only as an alcoholic, a frequent visitor to all the cafés in Montmartre. He was much more than that.
Red Girl: The Universe of a Misunderstood Genius
Modigliani, affectionately called Modì, will leave behind masterpieces of disarming beauty and elegance to the history of art.
Paraphrasing the words of Palma Bucarelli – the historical director of the Galleria Nazionale di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome – his paintings scream a violent sensuality.
They are a blend of misery, nobility, and purity turned into art and now above any kind of judgment.
The red girl is therefore not just a painting; it is the entire universe of the artist.
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