How are you?
Modigliani Institute Korea (MIK) is
currently introducing artworks of Amedeo Modigliani one by one every week.
The 25th work to introduce for this
week is “Portrait of Diego Rivera (1914)”.
This work is a portrait of an
expressionist style and an oil painting on cardboard with the size of 100 cm x
79 cm.
It is currently owned by the Sao
Paulo Museum of Modern Art in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
This work is unfinished because there
is no signature of Modigliani.
The model, Diego Rivera, was a
Mexican painter who was born on December 8, 1886 and died on November 24, 1957.
He is also the husband of Frida
Kahlo, a Mexican surrealist painter.
In 1921, Rivera began a mural
series that depicted the lives and history of Mexicans.
His massive frescoes played a major
role in establishing the Mexican mural movement in Mexican art history.
Rivera began art studies at the
Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City from the age of ten.
After arriving in Europe in 1907,
Rivera first studied art with “Eduardo Chicharro” in Madrid, Spain.
Then he moved to Paris, France, to
live and work with many artists in Montparnasse, especially at La Ruche, where
his friend Modigliani painted his portraits.
Rivera's friends, including Ilya
Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani, Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, Leopold
Zborowski, and Moise Kisling, are well illustrated in the painting, "Homage
to Friends from Montparnasse" drawn by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska.
At the time, Paris was a time of witnessing
the beginning of cubism in paintings of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georges
Braque and Juan Gris, and Rivera enthusiastically accepted this new art
movement.
Later, around 1917, Rivera,
inspired by Paul Cezanne's paintings, shifted his style toward Post-Impressionism.
When Rivera stayed in Paris, he frequently
visited Modigliani.
Modigliani and Rivera discussed art,
drank, and sometimes argued violently about art.
For today’s work, it is a kind of
sketchy oil painting that uses gray color as one of the main colors, giving the
impression of frescoes that are difficult to find in other paintings of Modigliani,
and some elements of the pointillism also appear.
The expression of such frescoes in this work can be assumed as Modigliani's intended suggestion, foreseeing that Rivera will become a famous painter for fresco in the future.
The round face like sun and
good-looking eyes also suggest that Rivera is a friendly and supportive friend
to Modigliani.
In this work, Modigliani used many
curves, which make the appearance of Rivera softer, emphasizing that he is a
good person and simultaneously conveying to viewers that Rivera is a person
with a big fat body.
It also shows swirling spirals that
are hard to find in other works of Modigliani.
The reason for the use of these
spirals in this work seems that although Modigliani portrayed Rivera as a good
figure, he also tried to express Rivera’s great artistic potential, including his
beastly passion, outstanding imagination and strong charisma like swirling,
inherent in Rivera, in this work.
Thank you.
No comments:
Post a Comment