Nu couche - Amedeo Modigliani Art Print / Canvas

Modigliani's Nu couché burns across the canvas like a censored telegram from rue Taitbout, December 1917 — the day Paris police marched into Berthe Weill's gallery and ordered the window stripped. She lies on oxblood velvet, bobbed hair black as wet ink, one arm folded behind her head, the other slack along her thigh. Her gaze cuts back at the viewer without apology. Vermilion mouth, kohl-rimmed almond eye, apricot-peach skin laid in transparent oil over a sienna contour. Behind her the divan unfurls in burgundy and ochre arabesque, while a slate-blue bolster anchors the head. Painted at Léopold Zborowski's, smoke-stained, tubercular, Italian Sephardic émigré among the Montparnasse circle. This Jeanne Hébuterne-era reclining nude rewrote the Western odalisque in one horizontal stroke.