Diego Rivera was a Mexican painter whose bold large-scale murals stimulated a revival of fresco painting in Latin America. Lived in unsettled times and led a turbulent life, Diego Rivera, widely known for his Marxist leanings, along with Marxism Revolutionary Che Guevara and a small band of contemporary figures, has become a countercultural symbol of 20th century, and created a legacy in art that continue to inspire the imagination and mind.
Background
Ethnicity:
Rivera claimed to be descended, on his mother's side, from Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism, and, on his father's side, from Spanish nobility.
Diego Rivera and his fraternal twin brother (who died at the age of two) were born in 1886, in Guanajuato, Mexico. His parents were both teachers; his mother was a devoted Catholic mestiza (part European, part Indian) and his father, a liberal criollo (Mexican of European descent). Diego's exceptional artistic talent was obvious to his parents from an early age, and they set aside a room in the house for him in which he painted his first "murals" on the walls.
Education
When Diego was six, his family moved from Guanajuato to Mexico City, to avoid the tensions caused by his father's role as co-editor of the opposition newspaper El Democrata. Once in Mexico City, his mother decided to send Diego to the Carpantier Catholic College.
By the age of ten, Rivera decided he wanted to attend art school, despite his father's desire that he pursue a military career. By the age of twelve, Rivera was enrolled full-time at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts, where he received training modeled on conservative European academies; one of his painting teachers had studied with Ingres, and another required Rivera to copy classical sculpture.
Trained in traditional techniques in perspective, color, and the en plein air method, Rivera also received instruction from Gerardo Murillo, one of the ideological forces behind the Mexican artistic revolution and a staunch defender of indigenous crafts and Mexican culture. With Murillo's support, Rivera was awarded a travel grant to Europe in 1906.
In Spain, Rivera studied the work of El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, and the Flemish masters that he saw in the Prado Museum, and which provided him with a strong foundation for his later painting. At the studio of the Spanish realist painter Eduardo Chicharro, Rivera became acquainted with the leading figures of the Madrid avant-garde, including the Dada poet Ramon Gomez de la Serna and the writer Ramon Valle-Inclan.
In 1909 Rivera traveled to Paris and Belgium with Valle-Inclan, where he met the Russian painter Angelina Beloff who would be Rivera's partner for twelve years. Returning to Mexico City in 1910, Rivera was offered his first exhibition at the San Carlos Academy. Rivera's return coincided with the onset of the Mexican Revolution, which lasted until 1917. Despite the political upheaval, Rivera's exhibit was a great success, and the money earned from the sale of his work enabled him to return to Europe.
Back in Paris, Rivera became a fervent adherent of Cubism, which he regarded as a truly revolutionary form of painting. However, Rivera's difficult relationships with the other members of the movement came to a tumultuous end following a violent incident with the art critic Pierre Reverdy, resulting in a definitive break with the circle and the termination of his friendships with Picasso, Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Gino Severini, and Jacques Lipchitz.
Rivera subsequently shifted his focus to the work of Cézanne and Neoclassical artists such as Ingres, as well as a rediscovery of figural painting. Receiving another grant to travel to Italy to study classical art, Rivera copied Etruscan, Byzantine, and Renaissance artworks, and developed a particular interest in the frescoes of the 15th and 15th centuries of the Italian Renaissance. In 1921, following the appointment of Jose Vasconcelos as the new Mexican Minister of Education, Rivera returned to his home country, leaving behind his partner, Angelina Beloff, as well as Marevna Stebelska, another Russian artist, with whom Rivera had a daughter, Marika, in 1919.
Rivera returned to Mexico with a reawakened artistic perspective, deeply influenced by his study of Classical and ancient art. There, he was afforded the opportunity to visit and study many pre-Columbian archaeological sites under the auspices of the Ministry of Education's art program. Yet his first mural painting, produced for the National Preparatory School and entitled “Creation” (1922), shows a strong influence of Western art.
Rivera soon became involved with local politics through his membership in the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers and his entry into the Mexican Communist Party in 1922. At this time, he painted frescoes in the Ministry of Education in Mexico City and the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo. During the latter project, he became involved with the Italian photographer Tina Modotti, who had modeled for his murals; the affair prompted him to separate from his wife at the time, Lupe Marin.
In 1927, Rivera visited the Soviet Union to attend the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, an experience he found extremely inspiring. He spent nine months in Moscow, teaching monumental painting at the School of Fine Arts. Upon his return to Mexico, he married the painter Frida Kahlo, who was twenty-one years his junior, and became the director of the Academy of San Carlos.
His radical ideas about education earned him enemies among the conservative faculty and student body; at the same time, he was expelled from the Communist Party for his cooperation with the government. Politically cornered, Rivera found support in the American ambassador to Mexico, Dwight W. Morrow, who commissioned him to paint a mural in the Cortes Palace in Cuernavaca depicting the history of that city. A great admirer of Rivera's work, Morrow offered the artist the opportunity to travel to the United States, all expenses paid. Rivera remained in the U.S. for four years. There, the always-prolific artist worked around the clock, painting murals in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit, celebrating the powerful forces of unions, education, industry, and art.
In New York, he was met with enormous popularity (his one-man show at The Museum of Modern Art had fifty-seven thousand visitors) as well as controversy (some of his murals were threatened with physical harm). Rivera's American adventure ended in 1933, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr., ordered the destruction of the mural he had commissioned for the lobby of Rockefeller Center, “Man at the Crossroads”, because of both Rivera's unwillingness to eliminate the portrait of Lenin and for what the Rockefeller family regarded as an offensive portrait of David Rockefeller.
After Rivera returned to Mexico, he and Kahlo shared a house-studio in a beautiful Bauhaus-style building in Mexico City that can still be visited today. From 1929 until 1945, Rivera worked on and off in the National Palace, creating some of his most famous murals there. In 1937, he and Kahlo helped Leon Trotsky - a major Russian Communist leader - and his wife obtain political exile; the Trotskys lived with Rivera and Kahlo for two years in the "Blue House" in the suburb of Coyoacan.
During his last years, Diego continued to paint murals, sometimes working on portable panels. He also produced a large number of oil portraits, usually of the Mexican bourgeoisie, children, or American tourists. These works are not always remarkable, and they are often infused with a kitschy aesthetic reminiscent of Pop art. However, they were very successful during his lifetime, and provided a way for the artist to acquire more pre-Columbian objects for his spectacular collection. Today, his collection is housed in the Anahuacalli Museum, a building inspired by the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan and designed by Rivera himself.
Widowed and already sick with cancer, Rivera married for the third time in 1955 to Emma Hurtado, his art dealer and rights holder since 1946. Following a trip to the Soviet Union made in the hope of curing his cancer, Rivera died in Mexico in 1957 at age seventy. His wish to have his ashes mingled with those of Kahlo was not honored, and he was buried in the Rotunda of Famous Men of Mexico. Rivera’s autobiography, “My Art, My Life”, was published posthumously in 1960.
Achievements
Widely regarded as the most influential Mexican artist of the 20th century, Diego Rivera was truly a larger-than-life figure who spent significant periods of his career in Europe and the U.S., in addition to his native Mexico. Together with David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco, Rivera was among the leading members and founders of the Mexican Muralist movement. More than half a century after his death, Rivera is still among the most revered figures in Mexico, celebrated for both his role in the country's artistic renaissance and re-invigoration of the mural genre as well as for his outsized persona.
The Blood of the Revolutionary Martyrs Fertilizing the Earth
The Adoration of the Virgin
The Liberated Earth with The Powers of Nature Controlled by Man
The Mechanization ofThe Country
The Maize Festival
The Embrace
The Perpetual Renewal of the Revolutionary Struggle
Sugar Plantation, Tealtenango, Morelos and Indian Slaves in the Gold Mines
May Day Procession in Moscow
The Hands of Dr Moore
The Hands of Nature Offering Water
The Pinole Seller
The Tenptations of Saint Antony
The Exploiters
Classical Head
Tehuana Women
Good Friday on the Santa Anita Canal
The Festival of The Distribution of The Land
Pre Hispanic America
Colonisation, 'The Great City of Tenochtitlan'
The Learned
Wall Street Banquet
The Painter, the Sculptor and the Architect
Man at the Crossroads/Man, Controller of the Univers
The Day of the Dead
My Godfather's Sons (Portrait of Modesto and Jesus Sanchez)
Landscape at Toledo
Portrait of Two Women
Figure Symbolizing the Asiatic Race
Dancer Resting
Nude with Calla Lilies
Delfina and Dimas
The Market
Portrait of Madesta and Inesita
Subterranean Forces
Portrait of Oscar Miestchaninoff
The Huastec Civilisation
Portrait of the Young Girl Elenita Carrillo Flores
Portrait of the Adolfo Best Maugard
Portrait of Sra. Dona Elena Flores de Carrillo
Portrait of Cuca Bustamante
Angeline Beloff
Edsel B. Ford
Triumph of the Revolution
Zapatista Landscape. The Guerrilla
Flower Carrier
Partition of the Land.
The History of Mexico
Night Scene in Avila
Portrait of Marevna
Creation
The History of Mexico
Allegory of California
Indian Boy and Indian Woman with Corn Stalks
Maturation
The History of Mexico
The Land's Bounty Rightfully Possessed
Motherhood Angelina and the Child Diego
The Papermakers
Detroit Industry, North Wall
Sailor at Breakfast
Portrait of Ramon Gomez de la Serna
Frozen Assets
House over the Bridge
The Mathematician
Portrait of Natasha Zakólkowa Gelman
The Abundant Earth
Detroit Industry, South Wall
Still Life
Our Bread
The Ancient Indian World
Still Life with Ricer also known as Still Life with Garlic Press
The Festival of The First of May
The Sacrificial Offering Day of the Dead
Notre Dame de Paris
The Making of a Fresco, Showing The Building of a City
Not detected
Breton Girl
A History of Medicine
Self-Portrait Dedicated to Irene Rich
Entry into the Mine
Religion
In 1948 he painted the mural "Dreams of a Sunday in the Alameda", which was forbidden because Diego depicted Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign which read "God does not exist." This mural was shown again only in 9 years, after Diego removed the inscription. However he stated "To affirm 'God does not exist', I do not have to hide behind Don Ignacio Ramírez; I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis."
Politics
In 1922 Diego Rivera Participated in the founding of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors and later that year he joined the Mexican Communist Party. He was inspired by the political ideals of the Mexican Revolution (1914-1915) and the Russian Revolution (1917). Rivera was of radical political beliefs and his attacks on the church made him a controversial figure even among communists. He was expelled from the Communist Party in 1929 after his provocative debates and risky political statements during his visit to the USSR. However he always supported the ideas of Karl Marx and even painted the portrait of Vladimir Lenin in his mural “Man on the Crossroads” in the Rockefeller Center, New York City.
A lifelong Marxist who belonged to the Mexican Communist Party and had important ties to the Soviet Union, Rivera is an exemplar of the socially committed artist. His art expressed his outspoken commitment to left-wing political causes, depicting such subjects as the Mexican peasantry, American workers, and revolutionary figures like Emiliano Zapata and Lenin. At times, his outspoken, uncompromising leftist politics collided with the wishes of wealthy patrons and aroused significant controversy that emanated inside and outside the art world.
Views
Rivera saw the artist as a craftsman at the service of the community, who, as such, needed to deploy an easily accessible visual language. Deploying a style informed by disparate sources such as European modern masters and Mexico's pre-Columbian heritage, and executed in the technique of Italian fresco painting, Rivera handled major themes appropriate to the scale of his chosen art form: social inequality; the relationship of nature, industry, and technology; and the history and fate of Mexico. He openly propagated communism and socialism and believed in revolutionary character of art.
Quotations:
"I've never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso."
"An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can’t feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn’t capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won’t put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn’t a great artist."
"... (Cubism) was a revolutionary movement, questioning everything that had previously been said and done in art. It held nothing sacred. As the old word would soon blow itself apart, never to be the same again, so Cubism broke down the forms as they had been seen for centuries, and was creating out of the fragments new forms, new objects, new patters and — ultimately — new worlds."
"When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the masters — Michelangelo, Cézanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican."
Membership
In 1926, Rivera became a member of AMORC, the Ancient Mystical Order Rosae Crucis, an occult organization founded by American occultist Harvey Spencer Lewis. In 1926, Rivera was among the founders of AMORC's Mexico City lodge, called Quetzalcoatl, and painted an image of Quetzalcoatl for the local temple.
Personality
Diego Rivera was a famous womanizer.
Interests
Politicians
Vladimir Lenin
Artists
El Greco, Jose Guadalupe Posada, Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne, Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Connections
In 1921, following the appointment of Jose Vasconcelos as the new Mexican Minister of Education, Rivera returned to his home country, leaving behind his partner, Angelina Beloff, as well as Marevna Stebelska, another Russian artist, with whom Rivera had a daughter, Marika, in 1919. During the latter project, he became involved with the Italian photographer Tina Modotti, who had modeled for his murals; the affair prompted him to separate from his wife at the time, Lupe Marin.
Upon his return to Mexico from the Soviet Union, he married the painter Frida Kahlo, who was twenty-one years his junior. In 1939, Rivera and Kahlo divorced, although they remarried a year later in San Francisco, while Rivera was working for the Golden Gate International Exposition. The two had a tremendously passionate, and an extremely tumultuous relationship - one that can easily be extrapolated by viewing her very personal artworks. The couple would ultimately remain together until Kahlo's death in 1954.
Widowed and already sick with cancer, Rivera married for the third time in 1955 to Emma Hurtado, his art dealer and rights holder since 1946.
