Busta di donna con testa di profile 1916

Amedeo Modigliani made this drawing, Busta di donna con testa di profile, with pencil on paper. We can think about the role of this artwork in the context of early twentieth-century Paris. Modigliani was not French, but, like many artists, he went to Paris to find the center of the art world. As a modernist, he was interested in breaking with tradition and finding new ways of representing the world, and one of his key strategies was to look outside the Western European tradition to the art of ancient and non-Western cultures. Here, the subject's downcast gaze references earlier European portraiture, while also acknowledging an interest in non-western art. This drawing reflects the complex cultural landscape of Paris at that time. If you want to dig deeper into the meanings of this image, you might investigate Modigliani’s biography, the history of Parisian art institutions, and the global circulation of images.