Diego Rivera (1886-1957)

Collection of Hermenegildo Alsina y Munné, Barcelona
Private Collection, Barcelona

The portrait side of this painting is restored and in good condition. The other side has paint losses and damages and has not been restored. In the portrait, there are retouches around the extreme edges addressing some frame abrasion, and the retouches extend into the picture by an inch in the upper center edge. There are no retouches to the figure or the landscape. The inscription in the lower right seems to be undisturbed, and the inscription in the upper right is similarly well preserved. It should be noted that the inscription in the sky is considerably more visible under ultraviolet light than it is to the naked eye, but it is original nonetheless. The restoration is good, and the work should be hung as is. (This condition report has been provided courtesy of Simon Parkes Art Conservation, Inc.)
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Mexican painter Diego Rivera (1886-1957) returned to Europe in 1911 determined to become an avant-garde painter. Once in Paris, he found a studio in the neighborhood of Montparnasse and after a brief trip to Normandy, he departed for Spain. Accompanied by his then Russian wife Angeline Beloff and his friend, the Catalan Hermenegil Alsina i Munné (1890-1980), whom he had met in Madrid in the gatherings of the new Café de Levante around 1909, Rivera began to paint pointillist landscapes in the village of Monistrol under the influence of Georges Seurat. 

The young Alsina would serve as Rivera's impromptu model for the now famous picture, Portrait of a Spaniard of 1912 with which he participated in the Salon d'Automne of Paris the following year. In this preparatory oil for the large-format picture, Rivera distorts the figure's anatomical proportions revealing the great influence of sixteenth-century master, Doménikos Theotokópoulos, El Greco, on his work. Executed in a Mannerist style, the elongated and elegant figure of Alsina contrasts with the composition's tempestuous sky. These formal experiments with the painting of El Greco, so vital in his development, would eventually lead Rivera to Cubism in the winter of 1912.

Professor Luis-Martín Lozano
September, 2016