GIRONA, SPAIN.- The exhibition on Amedeo Modigliani has been one of the most visited in Girona with nearly 27,000 visitors. The exhibition is about to end. It is on view through April 23 at the Fontana d’Or, reported La Vanguardia newspaper. Ennio Bìspuri, director of the Institute of Italian Culture of Barcelona, stated, ’A reference point, of dialogue and of memory among the three great pictoric traditions of Italy, France and Spain and of the period called belle époque.’ During the early 1900s in Paris, the Italian painter and sculptor Amedeo Modigliani, b. July 12, 1884, d. Jan. 24, 1920, developed a unique style. Today his graceful portraits and lush nudes at once evoke his name, but during his brief career few apart from his fellow artists were aware of his gifts. Modigliani had to struggle against poverty and chronic ill health, dying of tuberculosis and excesses of drink and drugs at the age of 35. In 1906, Modigliani settled in Paris, where he encountered the works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Georges Rouault, and Pablo Picasso (in his ’blue period’) and assimilated their influence, as in The Jewess (1908; private collection, Paris). The strong influence of Paul Cezanne’s paintings is clearly evident, both in Modigliani’s deliberate distortion of the figure and the free use of large, flat areas of color.