Amedeo Modigliani

Born in Italy in 1884, Modigliani studied antiquity and the Renaissance before moving to Paris in 1906, where he fell in with Picasso and Brâncuși. From 1909 to 1914 he focused on sculpture, exhibiting stylised pieces with the Cubists at the Salon d'Automne by 1912. His portraits and nudes — figures stretched into something between classical and strange — found no audience while he lived. He died of tubercular meningitis in Paris in 1920, thirty-five years old, and the work became sought after only after.