Retrato de Pablo Picasso

By 1915 the war had emptied Paris of buyers and even of basic supplies, and Modigliani, always poor, was often short of canvas. For this portrait of Picasso he glued a sheet of paper onto a scrap of cardboard, the cheap trick Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard had used, and let the tan of the board show through as a middle tone. The two men knew each other from the Montmartre years and circled each other with equal parts rivalry and respect. Modigliani gives Picasso a heavy, mask-like face, the two sides not quite matching, built from a few blunt strokes. It is a small thing, painted on scrap, of the most talked-about artist in the city.