Jeune garcon nu is a superb of example of Modigliani’s transition from his experimentation with sculpture to his mature style of painting after 1914.  Modigliani concentrated on sculpture and related drawings between 1909 and 1914. It was during this period that he began subtly to assimilate non-European sculptural traditions, African art being the most influential. The influence of Modigliani’s sculptural work on his paintings and drawings becomes particularly evident. The nude in this work bears a strong sculptural character, visible in the heavy, volumetric quality of the body. Modigliani was less interested in anatomical details, than in the immediate effect derived from ‘primitive’ African and Oceanic art.  As Werner Schmalenbach writes, “The artist [Modigliani] is concerned, above all, to set off form against form, and to give each individual part a high degree of formal autonomy. In many related drawings this becomes even more evident. This scansion of the body does not impair its overall form: all is held together by rhythm, color and natural proportion.” (Werner Schmalenbach, Modigliani, Munich, 1990, p.12) The highly stylized, geometrical forms were influenced not only by tribal artifacts, ♏but also by the sculptures of Constantin Brancusi, who similarly sought to reduce the human form to the minimal sculptural elements.