Description of the picture:
The girl in blue is Amedeo Modigliani. 1918. Oil on canvas. 116 x 73 cm
The year 1917, when the fragile and moving “Girl in Blue (Blue)” was created, was quite happy for Amedeo Modigliani. After all, it was at this time that he met the main love of his own life – Jeanne Hebuterne. According to the painter himself, earlier Jeanne came to him in dreams, and he lived all in anticipation of this particular meeting in reality.
Looking at the girl from the picture, you can find out a lot about the nature of Jeanne – her image in almost everything set the mood for the ladies’ portraits of the master. She was humble and quiet, tried not to distract the master from work, was distinguished by shyness and grace in everything that she did. God alone understands how it happened that fate brought together such different people – a young docile beauty from a good family and a quick-tempered, energetic mature artist, whose consumption and masculine attractiveness were already undermined by consumption.
For two years of a quiet life with Jeanne, surrounded by care, the painter created more than 100 paintings. One of the most piercing and lyrical paintings since then depicts a girl in a blue outfit.
The young heroine appears before the viewer. Her charming face is touched by a blush. A small nose and neat sponges give the image a severity, but a broken naughty lock from a hairstyle does not allow him to go into stiffness or excessive severity.
On the girl’s legs are black socks, which in color terms have something in common with hair. The rest of the color focuses on blue, cold and delicate at the same time. Blue is the heroine’s clothing (not counting golf and a lace collar), walls, and, of course, bottomless blue eyes that seem to absorb the viewer into their depths. Only the signature brown color of Modigliani, which wrote out the floor of the room, arms, legs and the girl’s face, “insulates” the overall color.
Of interest is the wall behind the girl’s back – the author did not make it plain, blooming with warm yellow spots, achieving a colorful play of texture. Researchers, in most cases, note the compositional game of Modigliani – the angle is clearly shifted in the picture. We mean the corner of the room behind the girl’s back, but looking at the right of the model, we are surprised to find it there. This author’s “move” only adds mystery to the canvas.
We do not know who this beautiful stranger is like a little angel – a real girl, the fruit of Modigliani’s imagination or some quintessence of the characteristics of his beloved Jeanne. You can only make assumptions that only increase the mystery flair around the picture.
Happiness fell a little on the lot of lovers. Two years later, Modigliani died, and exactly one day later, showing will and inflexibility – traits far from the image of the vulnerable girl in blue, Jeanne passed away voluntarily, unable to breathe, to live without her ambitious and contradictory genius."