MASP

Born in Livorno, Italy, Amedeo Modigliani studied at the fine art academies of Florence and Venice before moving to Paris in 1906, where he began to exhibit in salons. He has links with artists from the School of Paris, such as Henri Matisse (1869-1954) and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973). Like them, he was impacted by the non-Western art that was exhibited in the today extinct Musée d’Ethnographie du Trocadéro. His attention was drawn to masks and rite objects for their linear and refined visual synthesis, such as ancient Cycladic sculpture, which strongly inspired the artist. As a friend of Constantin Brancusi (1876-1957), Modigliani began to sculpt, but produced only around 25 works, as he had to abandon sculpture in 1914 due to a respiratory condition. He then focused on drawing and painting, and this transition between languages led him to create a singular form of portrait: firm traces, monochromatic backgrounds, slender characters and striking eyes. Remaining faithful to the human figure, Modigliani modernized the portrait genre through the simplification of lines in search of a timeless expression. Madame G. van Muyden is one of the rare portraits painted by the artist on commission. Cécile Crinsoz and her husband, Georges van Muyden, were Swiss and married in 1913. The couple mixed with artists, writers and composers. Born in 1891, she was 25 or 26 years old when she posed for Modigliani. Similar to other female portraits by the artist, the woman is elegantly dressed in black against a monochromatic background produced with dense brushstrokes. Her head is slightly tilted and her eyes are hazy, conferring an air of enigma. MASP has six portraits painted by Modigliani, four female and two male.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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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

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