Modi: part 2

So I'm almost done with Modi's biography.  Poor guy!  What a life.

Seriously, you know how artists today are just straight up mostly nutso?  Like you know how they have to dress in togas and shave half of their heads and walk around viewing life "artistically"?  Well.  Yeah.  Paris in the time of World War I (or the Great War) was pretty much filled to the top with all sorts of weirdos.  Famous artistic weirdos.

So Modi never really got in with a group.  He was always out on the fringe.  He did get along with women very well and he always treated them in a gentlemanly fashion (he was raised quite bougie).  He wanted his models to feel comfortable and he would often sing or recite poetry to them while they were in the studio and he was swigging heavy drink and painting their portraits.  

Poor Modi was a drunk.  Kinda crazy, too.  He ditched his bougie past to live like a vagabond in Paris.  His Italian family didn't really understand it and he would send postcards to his mom, whom he loved very much.

He had some love adventures.  One of the women was a writer who drove him ballistic crazy beans, she was an insane Englishwoman who used to fight wildly with him in public and in private.  No, like fight.  Yeah.  She was very sassy and together they were like fireworks.

Then he got tangled up with this woman who swore that she was having his baby (which he swore wasn't his until his dying day) - and this woman even after his death went to his family and said that the child was his (they politely refused and said any child he claimed they'd be happy to claim, too, but this one wasn't).

The last woman of his life was what he referred to as his "wife", although she wasn't technically (they never got married in a church or even had the papers done through a governmental institution), but he did write this oath that she was his wife and had witnesses sign it.  She had a baby with him, a little girl.  He was still crazy and out drinking on the town while little wifie-pants stayed home and they employed a wet nurse for the baby.

His "wife" was only 21 when she found she was pregnant with his second child.  It was when this became very turbulent.  Poor Modi got sick.  Like bad sick.

He had a horrible cough and he was coughing up blood.  His doctor misdiagnosed him and he was truly suffering from tubercular meningitis.

Amadeo's friend who was his art dealer was advised by many that since he was sick to hold all sales (until he died - which always skyrockets prices for art).  Modi was suffering badly and knew his end was at hand.

He died on Saturday, January 24 at 8:50 p.m.  His widowed "wife" stared incomprehensively.  She was nine months pregnant.  She tried to go in to deliver but they said that it wasn't time.

Two days later, she jumped out of a five story window.  His funeral was the next day, paraded through the streets of Paris, followed by Picasso, Leger, Valadon, Kisling, Salmon, Indenbaum, Zborowski and Simone Thiroux.  

Their friends said they should have a joint funeral, but since his wife's family hated his guts out and thought it was a worthless peasant, they refused.  They came and took away her body in a rush the day after his funeral and refused entry to the friends who followed in taxis to the cemetary.

His daughter was scooped up by his family and was brought up to live in Livorno, Italy.

And his paintings sold at exponential prices.

Poor Modi.  What an ending.  

Peace, love and don't drink absinthe,
Ms. Daisy