Portrait of Oscar Miestchanoff c. 1916 - 1917

Curator: What do you make of this ghostly sketch? Editor: It feels delicate, tentative. Like a half-formed thought. A whisper rather than a declaration. Curator: Indeed. We're looking at Amedeo Modigliani’s "Portrait of Oscar Miestchanoff," dating from around 1916 to 1917. Modigliani captured the sculptor Miestchanoff in pencil on paper. Editor: Sculptor meets sculptor... in lines! Is this just a preliminary sketch for a painting or sculpture, something he never intended to be seen? Curator: Possibly. But many consider his drawings to be complete works in themselves, revealing a raw and intimate side of his practice. They were part of his larger aesthetic project. Modigliani's portraits are really about flattening identity in order to make something "other." Editor: The geometric simplicity is striking. Look at how the lines define the jaw and shoulders, like building blocks of a person. And yet, there's something missing, almost heartbreaking about its lack of resolution. Curator: Consider the time in which it was made. During WWI Modigliani was struggling in Paris, often unwell and impoverished. Perhaps this fragile style mirrors his own vulnerability and that of the artistic community during wartime. Editor: It’s also striking how he emphasizes the eyes, even without fully rendering them. They seem to gaze inward, a man lost in thought, maybe worrying over that very same war. It feels incomplete but evocative. Curator: Incomplete, yes, but that's often the appeal, isn’t it? It invites us to finish the story. We become co-creators in a way, filling in the blanks, imbuing it with our own experiences. Editor: Absolutely, which goes to show a drawing need not be polished to have immense presence and impact. This sketch carries something very essential about both artist and sitter. Curator: A testament to the power of suggestion, wouldn’t you say? Even in its apparent incompleteness, the drawing offers us an incredibly direct and powerful way to reach back to Miestchanoff's world, through Modigliani’s own unique lens.