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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