🇪🇸 Toca para versión en Español
Johnny Depp won’t stop fascinating us with his artistic skills. Despite being known as an actor for decades, Depp has shown lately to the world everything he is capable of.
First he dusted off his passion for music and joined Hollywood Vampires, a rock band with other great names such as Alice Cooper, Joe Perry and Tommy Henriksen. He also went on tour with guitarist Jeff Beck recently. They even released and album together. On the other hand, he surprised the world with his NFT collection, portraits painted by Depp himself. If these were a success back then, his recent collection of physical artworks for sale vanished in only a few hours, generating millions in profits.
Just a few days go we knew he is coming back to acting in Jean du Barry (La Favorite), a film about king Louis XV of France that is being filmed right now at Versailles.
But the big surprise came today when it was published that this time Johnny Depp will be behind cameras in order to direct a film about Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani’s life.
The film, co-produced by In.2, Al Pacino and Barry Navidi, will be based on the play by Dennis McIntyre and adapted for the screen by Jerzy and Mary Kromolowski.
It will tell the story of the painter and sculptor in Paris in 1916. Long considered by himself a critical and commercial failure, Modigliani navigates a turbulent and eventful 48 hours that will become a turning point in his life, ultimately solidifying his reputation as an artistic legend.
It has been said that production is set to start in Europe in the spring of 2023, with casting to be revealed shortly.
“The saga of Mr. Modigliani’s life is one that I’m incredibly honored, and truly humbled, to bring to the screen,” said Depp, who produces for IN.2, the European arm of his production company Infinitum Nihil. “It was a life of great hardship, but eventual triumph – a universally human story all viewers can identify with.”
This won’t be the first time for Depp directing
Being 34 years old, Depp set out to direct a drama about the misery, starring himself and Marlon Brando.
In The Brave, Johnny Depp plays Raphael, a Native American family man who lives in the most absolute misery. Seeing the hopelessness of his situation and his inability to provide for his family, agrees to star in a snuff film for a large sum of money that he hopes will give his family a chance for a better life.
Despite the critics being divided, nowadays this movie is considered a cult film.
Who is Modigliani, the main character in this new film?
The artist who will bring Depp behind cameras again is Amedeo Modigliani (Wikipedia), an italian painter and sculptor whose life and work will be presented to us as a biopic (biographic film).
Modigliani (Livorno, 1884 – Paris, 1929), nicknamed The Avant-Garde ‘El Greco’, is known for his narrow-shaped portraits and artistic nudes. Alicia Vallina describes him very well in her article for “Descubrir el Arte” magazine (Spanish):
Such as ‘El Greco’, Modigliani tries to reach the sky with his infinite figures, not forgetting about sculpting narrow and sinuous faces with empty eye sockets. Sculpture aproaches him to African anthropology, to Greek simplicity and beauty, to churches’ philosophy of silence where he discovers Bellini and Carpaccio.
Alicia Vallina – ‘Descubrir el Arte’ Magazine (no. 253)
He was born in a sephardic jewish family, reading philosophers such as Spinoza and Nietzsche. He also used to read Dante or Baudelaire from a very young age. When he was 14 years old, he learnt to paint from one of the masters of the “macchiaioli” artistic movement. Later on he entered the Academia di Belle Arti (Florence) and subsequently the Regia Accademia ed Istituto di Belle Arti (Venice).
Art and wildness in Paris
In 1906, Modigliani decides to move to Paris, the cradle of the avant-garde, where a great number of artists were living those days. Painters such as Gauguin, Cézanne or Toulouse-Lautrec changed his artistic perspective. Lautrec, known for his artistic nudes painted behind the scenes in Parisian most exclusive cabarets, woke up his passion for painting the feminine body.
You can’t make love with a cube.
Modigliani in reference to Picasso’s artwork when he started his cubist phase.
Jeanne, his muse to death
Although his artistic nudes represented several women, his lifetime muse was Jeanne Hébuterne, an art student and a bourgeois whose family disowned for having a relationship with the artist. He never painted her nude.
Modigliani died years later of tuberculosis. Hours after his death, Jeanne, pregnant with their second child, threw herself from the fifth floor of the house they were living in.
Like many artists, Modigliani received a late fame, being his artwork recognised after his death.
Did you like the article? We’re dying to see how Johnny presents this artist form his perspective. Tell us your opinion in the comments: