Modigliani/Zadkine : Une amitié interrompue

Exhibition at the Musée Zadkine, Paris, 14 November 2024 - 30 March 2025

Ossip Zadkine met Amedeo Modigliani in 1913: the two artists, newly arrived in Paris, both dreamed of becoming sculptors and shared the ‘lean times’, as Zadkine would write in his memoirs. This friendship, as brief as it was artistically fruitful, was interrupted by the First World War. The two artists met again briefly after the war, before their paths diverged again. Modigliani enjoyed growing success with his paintings, but died prematurely at the age of 35 in 1920, while Zadkine embarked on a long and fruitful career as a sculptor.

Zadkine never forgot Modigliani and treasured the portrait painted by his former comrade, whose posthumous fame only grew, to the point where ‘Modi’ became one of the figures of modern art.

This catalogue of the first exhibition to focus on this artistic friendship, which had never been explored before, follows the paths of Modigliani and Zadkine in the turbulent and fertile context of Montparnasse from 1910 to 1920. Through almost 90 works - paintings, drawings, sculptures, as well as period documents and photographs - it brings together two major artists of the avant-garde, enabling us to renew the thread of an interrupted friendship.