Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (1884 -1920) Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Modigliani, Jewish-Italian artist,
Worked mainly in France
Where Pablo Picasso thrived

His parents, Sephardic Jews lived in Livorno
Descendents of Spinoza. He had rebellious genes

Pleurisy, T.B. marred his early childhood
Raving with typhoid fever, he dreamed of Florence
To convalesce, his mother took him there
To see the paintings that he yearned to witness.

Later, in Venice, he openly smoked hashish
Mixed with society's dregs, acted outrageous
In Paris, he squatted in communes,
With Montmartre's demi- monde, rough vagabonds
Dressed in brown corduroys, red scarf, black hat
An artist cheek by jowel with sewer rats

The mercury sank, quicksilver kingfisher
Bedraggled by hashish misuse and absinthe
Allowed a chink for his TB to prosper
A hundred drawings a day, as many lovers

Took a Russian poetess to bed
Painted portraits of his artist friends,
Soutine, Rivera, Max Jacob, Cocteau

Known as Modì, or Dedo to close friends
He met the Polish art dealer Zborowski
Who kept him solvent, and arranged a show
The public called the painter's works obscene
The show, closed by the police as an affront

And then he met Jeanne Hébuterne, his muse
An art student, his mistress and his model
They had a daughter, set up home together
Till T.B. raised its gorgon head and roared

A neighbour found him dying and delirious
His wife, himself, both destitute and poor

And then, according to the Jewish custom,
A funeral at Père Lachaise graveyard
Enormous, half of Paris came to mourn

Two days after his death, and eight months pregnant
Jeanne, aged twenty one,
Stepped from her parents; open fifth floor window
To join him, with their tiny unborn child

A single tombstone honours both the lovers.
His states ‘Struck by death at the very moment of glory'.
Hers: 'Devoted companion to the extreme sacrifice

Here are their famous neighbours buried near
Delacroix, David, Proust and Molière,
Bizet, Chopin, Balzac, Oscar Wilde,
Seurat, Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan,
Colette, Edith Piaf, and Marceau

Post mortem, Dedo's reputation flourished
Plays, novels a documentary to his name
One biography, three feature films,
One nude he made, short of £50 million pounds
In life, he bartered paintings for a meal