Rock me Amedeo

In European cities from Amsterdam to Zurich, the offering of international-caliber exhibitions on the annual art calendar is impressive. Prague lags woefully in this respect, generally lacking not just the funding and organizational experience to regularly mount shows by world-famous artists but often even the will. That's why the announcement of a significant exhibition in Prague by the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani seemed to herald a small miracle.

The show, which opened in December and runs through the end of February at Municipal House (Obecní dům), was organized by the Vernon Gallery, which operates the Vernon Project window space in Holešovice (it has recently closed its other two Prague locations). The promotional material promised a scholarly exhibition of works by this important artist, curated by Serena Baccaglini, a noted Modigliani specialist, which would also explore a connection between Modigliani and Czech artist František Kupka. Unfortunately, this exhibition will fall short of many viewers' expectations.

Visitors may be let down by the small number of paintings by Modigliani - just 10 - and the absence of major works. Spread over two rooms, the first half of the exhibition presents photographs, greatly enlarged and printed on canvas as if to make up for the small number of Modigliani paintings. There are also several paintings by Jeanne Hébuterne, with whom Modigliani had a daughter and was about to marry at the time of his early death, plus a portrait that she drew of him.

This first section also contains 10 lower-quality sketches by Modigliani, made in a quick, blithe hand. These are on a par with his dessins a boire, which he would knock out and use as coin for meals and glasses of wine at storied Parisian haunts, sometimes producing 40 in one evening.

The exhibition presents the much-romanticized story of the tragic artist. Born in 1884 in Livorno, Italy, and plagued with health problems from a young age, Modigliani worked as an artist for only two decades before dying from tubercular meningitis at the age of 36, destitute and having had just one solo exhibition in his lifetime. Hébuterne, eight months pregnant with their second child and inconsolable, killed herself right after Modigliani's death.

Modigliani worked alongside such artists as Max Jacob and Pablo Picasso, examples of whose work are used to fill out the show, in Paris around the time of World War I, when that city was the art center of the world. There Modigliani produced a body of enigmatic portrait paintings, which viewers finally get to see at the tail end of the exhibition.

The second half of the show builds to a crescendo, first presenting some works on paper and then culminating with a small group of the artist's characteristic paintings: highly stylized portraits with almond-shaped, often "blind" eyes, exaggeratedly long noses and elongated necks.

Unfortunately, a star of the show was absent halfway into the exhibition's run. In place of the painting Portrait of Anna (1918-19) there was a framed reproduction with a note explaining that the original had been delayed on its journey from Switzerland but was expected sometime in January (it was still missing at press time) - a big embarrassment for the organizer, especially since this was the image printed on all the promotional materials for the show.

After this anticlimax, the show slowly winds down with a series of pencil portraits made with a light, delicate touch and linear rhythm, and then picks up momentum for an unusual denouement.

The last part of the show features seven disparate works by the pioneering Czech artist František Kupka (1871-1957). The curatorial justification is a photo showing works by both artists installed in the same room of the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1912 - where Modigliani presented some of his sculptures (none of which is included in this show).

This tenuous tie between Modigliani and Kupka, however, is perhaps not as farfetched as the connection being advanced between Modigliani and the Italian manufacturer DeLonghi.

Placement of kitchen appliances directly in the exhibition space and a text stressing that the company already existed in Modigliani's day, along with a facsimile of the artist's signature, is just strange. While the costs of mounting even a minor exhibition by a major artist can be staggering, especially for a small gallery like Vernon, and would be nearly impossible without such financial support, the actual inclusion of a sponsor's products, placed on pedestals as if they were additional works of art, is tacky.

Perhaps the intrusion of products among the art would have been a bit more palatable if the products of another Italian company sponsoring the exhibition, chocolatier Ferrero, were set out on pedestals for visitors to sample.

Mimi Fronczak Rogers can be reached at
Features@praguepost.com