"Portrait of Pablo Picasso"
1915
Oil on cardboard
34 x 26 cm

From the Hermitage:

"The Portrait of Pablo Picasso (1915, paper glued on carton, oil paint, 34.2 õ 26.3 cm) surprises the viewer not only by its deliberate and willful primitivism but still more by the way this was used to create an image of a man who is very well known to everyone from his self-portraits and from a great deal of documentary material.
The portrait was very likely drawn in one session, quickly and freely. Modigliani was short of canvas, so he found a small piece of carton and glued paper onto it, using the method of Toulouse-Lautrec and Bonnard, whereby the yellowish color of the background material serves as a kind of orientation point. In combination with the paint, which did not cover it entirely, the paper serves in one place as the sitter’s sweater or as highlights on his face. There are two main colors – black, which provides the drawing background, and a red-brown ochre and crimson that is diluted with whitener and which successfully conveys the fresh color of a suntanned face, - as Picasso probably looked when he returned to Paris at the end of the summer of 1915 following a trip to the sea. In the painting there is also a French inscription that is less visible, though placed in a prominent place – SAVOIR, meaning ‘to know, to see, knowledge.’ "