Pace Gallery has announced the highlights of its upcoming presentation at Art Basel Paris, featuring a major 1918 painting by Amedeo Modigliani titled "Jeune fille aux macarons (Young Woman with Hair in Side Buns)" priced at approximately $10 million. The inclusion of this significant work serves both as a tribute to the Italian artist's deep connection to Paris, where he spent much of his life and is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, and as a preview of a newly formalized partnership between the gallery and the Institut Restellini.
This collaboration centers around a forthcoming Modigliani catalogue raisonné set for publication in March, which represents a decades-long scholarly effort. The partnership will extend beyond the publication, with Pace planning to host a series of symposiums in New York in 2026 and a comprehensive exhibition on the artist in 2027. The catalogue raisonné, authored by renowned Modigliani scholar Marc Restellini and distributed by Yale University Press, promises to be the definitive publication on the artist.
"Marc Restellini's Modigliani catalogue raisonné is not only the definitive publication on the artist—it is also setting a new standard for all catalogues raisonnés," stated Pace CEO Marc Glimcher. "His groundbreaking methodology and pioneering use of science and technology as part of this decades-long project involving dozens of experts around the world has led to the authentication of a total of 424 works by the artist, many of which we are thrilled to exhibit at our New York gallery in 2027."
The catalogue raisonné has been an extraordinarily long project in development, with Restellini beginning his research in 1985. For much of that time, his meticulous research involved persuading cautious collectors to subject their purported Modiglianis to scientific testing and infrared photography. The project was initially funded by the Wildenstein Institute, a Paris-based research center run by the Wildenstein family, who were long-time art dealers and partners in PaceWildenstein for nearly 20 years.
However, the project faced significant obstacles when Daniel Wildenstein died and his son Guy informed Restellini that the institute would no longer support his research, according to a 2020 copyright lawsuit reported by The New York Times. The Wildenstein Institute subsequently wound down operations and transferred its archives to a new nonprofit organization, the Wildenstein Plattner Institute, which focuses on digitizing catalogues raisonnés and other important art-historical documents.
Legal complications arose in 2020 when Restellini sued the Wildenstein Plattner Institute to prevent it from publishing materials he had produced for the Modigliani project. The two parties eventually reached a settlement in May, according to public court documents, clearing the way for the publication to move forward. The release of Restellini's long-awaited catalogue raisonné—the sixth produced for Modigliani—has been anticipated for more than a decade, with the scholar previously stating in 2016 that he would proceed with publication despite receiving death threats and legal pressure over his decision to exclude certain works.
Authenticity issues have long plagued the Modigliani market, creating a complex landscape for collectors and dealers. The artist was known to sell or gift paintings and drawings without properly documenting them, which has left ample opportunity for forgeries to surface over the years. Given the high prices his works command in today's market, the incentive for creating fakes remains substantial. The late Milton Esterow, former publisher of ARTnews, once described a "Modigliani forgery epidemic" in Vanity Fair, quoting former Art Basel director Marc Spiegler, who observed: "The drama here is that I could find a Modigliani in an attic tomorrow, with a letter from Modigliani attached to it, and people would still hesitate."
The market for Modigliani's work reached unprecedented heights in 2015 when his auction record was set at Christie's New York, where "Nu couché" sold for $170.4 million to billionaire investor Liu Yiqian, one of China's leading art collectors. A comparable work sold in 2018 at Sotheby's New York for $157 million. However, market activity has been more limited in recent years, with only seven Modigliani works priced above $10 million coming to auction since then. The most recent was "Paulette Jourdain" (1917), which sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong in October 2023 for $34.8 million.
With the Wildenstein Plattner-Restellini dispute now resolved and the catalogue raisonné finally approaching publication—promising to include approximately 100 newly authenticated works, half of which reside in museum collections—Pace may be positioning itself for a potential revival in the artist's market. The "Jeune fille aux macarons" featured in their Art Basel Paris presentation is naturally included in the new publication, lending additional credibility to the work's authenticity and provenance.
The painting has a notable exhibition history, having last appeared in 2021 at Vienna's Albertina Museum for "The Primitivist Revolution." It was previously offered by David Lévy at Masterpiece London in 2019, though it remained unsold at that time. According to Pace, the work has been held by the same collector since 2005, with provenance records indicating it belongs to a private collection in Switzerland. This stability in ownership, combined with its inclusion in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné, positions the work as a significant offering in the current art market.
