Amedeo Modigliani was born on 12 July 1884 in the Italian port town of Leghorn. He began his education under the local painter Guglielmo Micheli in 1898, before enrolling at the Academy of Fine Art in Florence in 1902, and then moving on to the fine Art Academy in Venice in 1903. He arrived in Paris early in 1906 and enrolled at the Académie Colorossi. In 1907 he became a member of the Société des Artists Indépendants and met the young physician Dr Paul Alexandre, who became a close friend and patron. It was through Alexandre that Modigliani met Constantin Brancusi in 1909, a meeting that seems to have revived his interest in sculpture. From about 1909 to 1914 Modigliani devoted himself almost exclusively to sculpture and to drawings which are often associated with this sculpture. In 1912 he exhibited a group of seven carved stone heads at the Salon d'Automne. It was only after Modigliani abandoned sculpture in 1914 that he developed the style of painting for which he is best known. These paintings, mostly portraits and some nudes, were produced in the brief five years from 1915 to 1919. In 1917 he had his first and only solo exhibition during his lifetime, at the Berthe Weill Gallery, Paris, and this exhibition was closed on the first day by order of the police, who considered the paintings of nudes obscene. Modigliani died in the Hôpital de la Charité in Paris on 24 January 1920 of tuberculosis aggravated by privation, alcoholism and drug addiction.