Before moving to Paris in 1906, Modigliani studied at the academies of Florence and Venice. In the French capital, he lived in Montmartre, a district that was home to many artists, such as Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), with whom Modigliani became friends. In 1909, he met Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), an influence that led him to dedicate himself exclusively to sculpture until 1914, when he went back to painting. Modigliani was an alcoholic and lived in penury, dying at the age of 36 from tuberculous meningitis. In the context of the so-called School of Paris, he developed a style that tended toward geometric stylization, as in the elongated faces of African masks. His characters also bear a melancholy reminiscent of the Italian madonnas of the Renaissance. His portraits and nudes are painted on backgrounds that are nearly monochromatic, but marked by brushstrokes. The necks are elongated; the faces are rounded, with delicate lines. The six paintings in MASP’s collection, all produced between 1915 and 1919, have been part of the museum’s collection since its first years. Chakoska (1917), part of MASP’s collection, is one of at least twelve identified portraits of this model, produced by Modigliani from 1916 onward. She was the wife of a childhood friend of the painter, whom he met in a Montparnasse café in Paris, and fell in love with.
— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017
By Nelson Aguilar
Modigliani’s characters have the Gothic, lanky behavior of a sunflower reaching up to celebrate heliotropism, as evinced in the other five portraits that integrate the Masp Collection – Madame G. van Muyden, Renée, Chakoska, Retrato de Leopold Zborowski, Lumia Czcchwska. The exception to the rule is Portrait of Diego Rivera, where the artist blew up format into two concentric elements to render the Mexican painter’s oversized figure. The artist adopted a Divisionist technique in which brush strokes are rhythmically applied so as to construct a stained-glass-like picture. The painting has the same unfinished aspect as Cézanne’s watercolors. In Modigliani, the void indicated by the ochre cardboard is instigated by the black and silver streaks and becomes a territory inhabited by gestuality. After years of interest in millennial paintings, he had become familiar with ceremonial rites. The School of Paris, unlike academic culture after the Renaissance rediscovered the richness of the pre-Columbian art forms associated with the sun-worshipping cults, which Rivera exalted on returning to his home country.
More than a portrait, the work is an anticipation of the sitter’s destiny captured through Modigliani’s transcultural permeability, learned from Brancusi and which also influenced Tarsila do Amaral. In 1953, in response to a Masp inquiry, Rivera stated that the portrait had been painted at his studio in Montparnasse (Paris), where Modigliani was a frequent visitor.
— Nelson Aguilar, 1998
