Modigliani was convinced Rodin and his followers had corrupted sculpture with an overreliance on clay—“too much mud,” he called it. Real sculptors, he declared, carved directly from stone. To do so ...

A painting by Italian Modernist Amedeo Modigliani made history at Sotheby’s Paris’s Modern art sales on Friday. Bust of Elvira (1919) more than tripled its estimate to fetch €27 million ($31.3 million ...