Akhmatova as Acrobat

In sensual movement and physical energy, this drawing appears unique in Modigliani’s work. Also in its imaginatively erotic depiction of Anna Akhmatova.

Anna Akhmatova [1889-1966] is considered, with Boris Pasternak and Osip Mandelstam, the greatest Russian poet of the twentieth century.

Modigliani met Akhmatova in the summer of 1910 on her honeymoon. She returned the following year, alone, to Paris. And they began an intense affair. Her poetic genius and extraordinary beauty had a profound affect on Modigliani. His sculpture – and the drawings relating to them – are filled with her presence.

‘She was a sparkling water sprite, an avid wanderer on foot, climbed like a cat, and swam like a fish...Another feature that marked Akhmatova off from the others was her somnambulism, her moon-walking. On moonlit nights, a thin girl could be seen in a white nightdress walking along the roof of their house in her sleep.’

It is as ‘Acrobat’ that Modigliani chose, in this single instance, to portray Akhmatova’s sensual athleticism. Her long, agile body. And her adored face, with its famous aquiline nose set characteristically amid a mass of hair. Her detached expression is of the dreamer her friend touchingly remembers. The above photograph was taken in 1916. And whilst Modigliani would not have seen it, Akhmatova would, given their relationship and the fact she was so proud of her athleticsm , have certainly demonstrated to him her physical suppleness.

It is fascinating how close, in posture and tension, this drawing is to the above photograph. To our knowledge there exists no other Modigliani drawing with this particular pose and energy.

'She had a dancer's body. As an adolescent she was five foot eleven inches tall, and so lithe and supple that she could easily touch the nape of her neck when she lay prone.'

Viewed horizontally, this drawing relates to the twenty-two recorded ‘Reclining Nudes’ painted between 1916 and 1919.

In Memoir of Modigliani [1958 - 65] Akhmatova describes their love for each other:

‘In 1910, I saw him very rarely, just a few times. But he wrote to me during the whole winter. I remember some sentences from his letter.

One was: ‘Vous êtes en moi comme une hantise’ (you are obsessively part of me). He did not tell me that he was writing poems.

I know now that what most fascinated him about me was my ability to read other people’s thoughts, to dream other people’s dreams and a few other things of which everyone who knew me had long since been aware. He repeatedly said to me: ‘On communique..’ (we understand each other). And often: ‘il n’y a que vous pour réaliser cela.’ (Only you can make that happen).

We both probably failed to realise a crucial point: everything that was happening was for both of us but the prehistory of our lives – of his very short life, of my long life. Art had not yet ignited our passions, its all-consuming fire had not yet transformed us; it must have been the light and airy hour of dawn. But the future, which announces its coming long before it arrives, was knocking at the window. It lurked behind the lanterns, invaded our dreams and took on the frightening form of Baudelaire’s Paris which lay in wait somewhere in the vicinity. And Modigliani’s divine attributes were still veiled. He had the head of Antinoos, and in his eyes was a golden gleam – he was unlike anyone in the world. I shall never forget his voice. He lived in dire poverty, and I don’t know how he lived. He enjoyed no recognition whatsoever as a painter.

At that time (1911) he lived in the Impasse Falguière. He was so poor that in the Jardin du Luxembourg we sat on a bench and not, as was usual, on chairs since you had to pay for them. He complained neither about his poverty nor about the lack of recognition, both of which were clearly apparent. Just once in 1911 he said that the previous winter had been so tough for him that he had been unable to think even of that which was dearest to him.

He seemed to me to be encircled by a girdle of loneliness. I cannot recall him ever greeting anyone in the Jardin du Luxembourg or the Latin Quarter even though everyone knew everyone else there. I never heard him mention the name of an acquaintance, a friend or a fellow painter, and I never heard him joke. I never once saw him drunk, and he never reeked of wine. He evidently did not begin drinking until later, although hashish had already cropped up in his stories. He did not appear to have a steady girlfriend as yet. He never recounted amorous episodes from the past (which everyone else did). He never discussed mundane matters with me. He was communicative, not on account of his domestic upbringing but rather because he was at his creative peak…..

At this time he was busy working on a sculpture in the small yard next to his studio (in the deserted lane you could hear the echo of his hammer), dressed in his working clothes. The walls of his studio were full of incredibly tall portraits (they seemed to stretch from the floor to the ceiling). I have never seen any reproductions – did they survive? He called his sculpture ‘la chose’ – it was exhibited, I think in 1911 at the Independents. He asked me to come and view it, but at the exhibition he did not come over to me because I had not come alone but with friends. The photograph of this ‘chose’ which he gave me disappeared at the time I lost most of my possessions.

He used to rave about Egypt. At the Louvre he showed me the Egyptian collection and told me there was no point I see anything else, ‘tout le reste’. He drew my head bedecked with the jewellery of Egyptian queens and dancers, and seemed totally overawed by the majesty of Egyptian art. Egypt was probably his last fad. Shortly afterwards he became so independent that his pictures betray no external influence. Today this period is referred to as Modigliani’s ‘Période Nègre’.

Commenting on the Venus de Milo, he said that women with beautiful figures who were worth modelling or drawing always seemed unshapely when clothed. Whenever it rained (it often rained in Paris) Modigliani took with him a huge old black umbrella. We would sit together under this umbrella on a bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg in the warm summer rain, while nearby slumbered le vieux palais à l’Italienne. We would jointly recite Verlaine, whom we knew by heart, and we were glad we shared the same interests….

It astonished me that Modigliani could find ugly people beautiful and stick by this opinion. I thought even then that he clearly saw the world through different eyes to ours. Everything that was fashionable in Paris and which attracted the most enthusiastic praise did not even come to Modigliani’s attention.

He did not draw me from life but alone at home. He gave me these drawings as a gift; there were sixteen of them. He asked me to frame them and to hang them in my room. They were lost in Tsarskoye Selo during the first revolution. The one that survived is less characteristic of his later nudes than the others.

We talked mostly about poems. We both knew a lot of French poetry: Verlaine, Laforgue, Mallarmé, Baudelaire. Later I met a painter who loved and understood poetry just as Modigliani did – Alexander Tyschler. That happens very rarely with painters.

He never recited Dante to me. Maybe because I still knew no Italian. Once he said to me: ‘I have forgotten to tell you that I am Jewish’. He told me straight away that he had been born near Livorno and was twenty-four years old. (He was actually twenty-six). He told me he had been interested in aviators (today we say pilots) but was disappointed when he met one: they were simply sportsmen. (What did he expect?)….and all around us raged cubism, all-conquering but alien to Modigliani….

Modigliani was contemptuous of travellers. He thought travelling was a substitute for real activity. He always carried Les Chants de Maldoror about with him. At the time this book was a rarity. He described how at Easter he had gone to early morning mass in a Russian church to watch the procession of the cross, since he loved ornate ceremonies. And how a ‘seemingly important personage’ (probably from the Embassy), had exchanged an Easter kiss with him. Modigliani probably never really understood what that signified…….

Once when I went to call on Modigliani, he was out: we had apparently misunderstood one another so I decided to wait several minutes. I was clutching an armful of red roses. A window above the locked gates of the studio was open. Having nothing better to do, I began to toss the flowers in through the window. Then without waiting any longer, I left.

When we met again, he was perplexed at how I had entered the locked room because he had the key. I explained what had happened, ‘but that’s impossible – they were lying there so beautifully’.

For a long time I thought I would never hear anything from him again……..but I was to hear a great deal of him………’

Perhaps the sight of the small, startlingly handsome young Italian and his tall, strikingly beautiful Russian companion, in fervid conversation, each filled with youthful hope, stopped a passer-by. As they sheltered close, cocooned and oblivious to the world, beneath a battered black umbrella shielding them from the beating rain. And recited, in hushed, impassioned voices, to each other or in perfect harmony, the verses they knew by heart and loved so well.

And in the years to come. In the knowledge of the tragedy and triumph that awaited both, would he not have wondered at that moment?

Akhmatova, in stating that Modigliani cared only for Egyptian art, unwittingly provides a fascinating, touching insight into his absolute single-mindedness. For we know that he was inspired by diverse cultures and visited other museums. Akhmatova’s imminent return to Russia and Modigliani’s obsessive need to see her as frequently as possible, during those few precious weeks together, among the Egyptian queens and goddesses, so that he might more vividly portray her as one, can be the only explanation for her claim.


5th Dynasty The Louvre	Funerary Relief 18^th Dynasty The Louvre

Many of the Egyptian reliefs, including those illustrated above, had been buried with the individuals they commemorated – to accompany and comfort their spirits into the next world. This would have appealed to Modigliani’s mystical nature – as would their purity of line. And accorded with his ardent wish to celebrate, preserve and proclaim for all time Akhmatova’s beauty and timeless poetic spirit.

And bring to mind Sreznevskaya’s description of her ‘climbing like a cat, and swimming like a fish’.

Modigliani was inspired also by the sensual beauty and erotically graceful movements of the carved Indian deity dancers figures he saw at the Musée Guimet.

Anna Akhmatova’s intellectual, poetic genius and statuesque, graceful yet erotic beauty perhaps explain why no other woman, apart from Jeanne Hebuterne, appears to have so profoundly affected Modigliani's art.