A girl in yellow dress 1917

Amedeo Modigliani made this painting of a girl in a yellow dress, using oil on canvas, sometime in the early 20th century. Look at that color, it’s like he mixed sunshine with a bit of earth, giving her dress a glow that’s both warm and grounded. The paint has this way of being thin in places, almost like watercolor, and then thicker where he really wanted to emphasize a shape or a shadow. Her face is built from these subtle layers, creating a delicate, almost porcelain-like quality. And those eyes? They’re like two small pools, gazing out with a mix of curiosity and knowing. If you follow the line of the neck, it leads down to her hands, folded so gently. Modigliani’s got this talent for capturing a person's presence with so few strokes, like he’s inviting us into a quiet conversation. You can see a similar approach in the work of Marie Laurencin, the way she reduces a figure to its essence, finding poetry in simplicity. With Modigliani, it’s never just about what you see, but how it makes you feel.