Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920)

Amedeo Modigliani, born in Livorno, was a great Italian avant garde artist who worked among the Bohemians in Paris mostly in the years prior to World War I. He was generally unknown during his lifetime but was beginning to be recognized for his distinctive style of painting, drawing, and sculpture just before his premature death in 1920 from disease (believed to be a form of tuberculosis), which many believe to have been exacerbated by poverty, overwork, and use of alcohol and narcotics. The tragedy of his early death was compounded when his companion Jeanne Hébuterne took her own life in despair a few days later. They left behind a 14-month-old daughter, Jeanne Modigliani, who grew up to become an art historian and painter; she wrote her father's biography, Modigliani, Man and Myth, published in 1958.