Portrait of Diego Rivera 1914

This is Modigliani’s portrait of Diego Rivera, painted with oil on canvas. Look at those dominant smudges and strokes of dark colors, punctuated by fleshy pinks. I can just imagine Modigliani building this image, wiping away, reworking it, and allowing it to emerge, like a half-remembered dream. The canvas is awash with dark blues and browns, with some salmon and pink accents. He’s captured Rivera in this moment of thought, eyes gazing upwards, lost in contemplation, or maybe he's just high. I think there is a sensitivity to his depiction, and I’m interested in his obvious respect for another artist. Maybe this is what it looks like when artists paint other artists? That thick, almost clotted, quality to the paint is incredible and it communicates a feeling of depth and intensity. You know, painting is like a conversation, an ongoing exchange across time. Each brushstroke, each color choice is like a word or a phrase in this dialogue and that allows for ambiguity, so many possible interpretations.