Nu couché
Amedeo Modigliani (1917)
Amedeo Modigliani’s Nu couché (1917) recasts the reclining nude as a <strong>modern icon of desire</strong>—a body reduced to <strong>lyric contour</strong> and glowing planes that stretch diagonally across a crimson bed. Warm, peach-toned flesh is keyed against <strong>saturated reds</strong> and <strong>cool blue pillows</strong>, fusing intimacy with monumentality while stripping away myth to confront eroticism directly <sup>[2]</sup><sup>[3]</sup>. Painted amid wartime Paris, it helped ignite the 1917 censorship scandal and later became a market landmark, underscoring its status as a defining image of <strong>modernism’s nude</strong> <sup>[4]</sup><sup>[5]</sup>.
