Bildnis Rivera

In 1914 Diego Rivera was not yet the muralist who would cover Mexican walls with revolution. He was a heavyset young painter living in Paris, deep in Cubist circles, one of the crowd of foreign artists packed into Montparnasse. Modigliani, a friend, painted him several times that year. Here he builds the big round head and bulky body out of loose, swirling dabs of colour, closer to the restless handling of his neighbours than to the calm, elongated portraits he became known for. Within a year the war would scatter that international colony. Rivera eventually went home to Mexico, and Modigliani, already ill, had six years left to live. The two portraits he made of Rivera that year are among the few glimpses we have of the man before his fame.