Boy in a Blue Jacket (reverse: Female Nude)

About this work

Modigliani painted the boy in the penultimate year of his life, in the south of France, when tuberculosis had already taken hold. His models then were farm children and local servants — people who sat for nothing. The long neck and empty eyes come straight from African masks and from the stone heads he carved before he turned to painting.

This is a single panel with two faces: the boy on one side, a female nude on the other. A painting on canvas is always one- sided, because a stretcher sits behind it; a mosaic has no "behind" — it has two surfaces, and Rami Alon used exactly that. Fifty working days in all, twenty-five for each face.