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Modigliam went his own way, undistracted by all that was happening around him. With the benefit of hindsight, it can now be seen that his mission-in an age in which all traditional values were being called into question-was to give the human image one more chance. And he refused to allow any formal or expressive concerns whatever to induce him to go beyond the human image, at a time when by historical necessity that image was under threat. To him, the integrity of the person was inviolable, even though he subjected it to formal interventions in the early work and to 'Modiglianesque' distortions in the late work. He made no attempt to interpret the person he showed, nor to penetrate his or her inner depths; to him the outer appearance, admittedly seen in a highly individual view, was the whole person. He maintained this intensely classical, Renaissance and-it may be said-humanistic vision in an atmosphere in which fragmentation and distortion were on the agenda everywhere. To him, that agenda was no reason to sacrifice his holistic human image.
excerpt from Modigliani by Werner Schalenbach
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