Diego Rivera
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Diego Rivera was born December 8,
1886, in Guanajuato in Mexico, to Diego
and Maria Barrientos Rivera. Being a
family of rather modest means, they lived in
Guanajuato until 1892, when they moved to
Mexico City.
Guanajuato
La calle
De Avila
1908
At the age of ten Diego Rivera
was doing well in school. Passionately
fond of drawing from an early age, he
started taking evening painting classes
at the San Carlos Academy. In 1898 he
enrolled there as a full time student,
and in 1906, at the annual show, he
exhibited for the first time, with 26
works. At age twenty Diego Rivera
was well established as a painter.
House Over the Bridge
1909
Diego's father was a municipal councellor in Guanajuato, a liberal and
anticlerical man. Diego's two aunts, who lived with the family, were rather
religious. Diego was interested in military issues,and he was especially
fascinated by the Russian army and the conflictit was facing;
the Tsar and the Orthodox Church versus Marxist Revolutionaries.
Diego Rivera,
self portrait
1907
In 1907 Diego got a travel grant, and went to Spain. He travelled extensively in Spain,
and also went to France, Belgium, and England. In Brussels in 1909 he met
Angelina Belhoff, a slender, blond young Russian painter, a kind, sensitive, almost
unbelievably decent person,and she became Diego's partner for the next twelve years.
They travelled together, mostly in Europe, and spent much time in Paris, where Diego
Rivera participated in several exhibitions. During this time they had many friends,
and several of these were Russians.
Diego, 1910
By 1913 Diego Rivera was fascinated by the early cubist movement, led by
celebrated Spaniard Pablo Picasso, and started experimenting with cubism
himself. By 1914 Diego was viewed as one of the more interesting members
of the Cubist movement, one of the avant garde. Diego was a great admirer
of Pablo Picasso, and they became close friends. Diego confided that in
Paris, when they were by themselves, they would have the best of times
saying things about other painters they would never tell anybody else!
Portrait of
Two Women
Sailor at
Breakfast
1914
Portrait of Ramón Gomez
de la Serna, 1915
The Architect
1915
The First World War broke out in Europe, and in Mexico the
revolutionary folk hero Emiliano Zapata promoted returning
the land to the people. It was in these years Diego Rivera
became a revolutionary himself, and felt the call of his
country. His friend, David Sternberg, the Soviet People's
Commissar of Fine Arts had invited him to Russia, and
Diego was tempted to go, but in 1921 he returned to
Mexico instead.
Emiliano Zapata
Zapatista Landscape:
The Guerrilla
An expression of his
Mexican heritage
and the growing call
of the Mexican
Revolution
surrounding Diego.
1915
Motherhood:
Angelina and the
Child Diego
1916
Self
Portrait
1918
In addition to his painting activities, which by now were focused
increasingly on murals, Diego Rivera participated in the founding of the
Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors in the
autumn of 1922, and later that year he joined the Mexican Communist
Party. In the years that followed, Diego was engaged by The (Soviet)
Revolution, as his signature on the mural The Agitator illustrates:
He became convinced that a new
form of art should respond to
“the new order of things … and
that the logical place for this art …
belonging to the populace, was on
the walls of public buildings.”
Returning in 1921 to Mexico, he painted, with the
assistance of younger artists, large murals dealing
with the life, history, and social problems of Mexico,
in the Preparatory School and the Ministry of
Education in Mexico City and the Agricultural School
of Chapingo. To the peasants and workers he became
a sort of prophet.
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0842002.html
First Mural, 1922-1923 The Creation
Day of
The Dead
1924
Ministry of
Education
Burning of
the Judases
1924
Ministry of
Education
La Molendera
1924
Flower Day
1925
The Agitator
1926
In the autumn of 1927 Diego took a trip to the Soviet Union, as a member
of an official delegation of Mexican Communist Party functionaries and
various workers representatives, to take part in the tenth anniversary
celebrations of the October Revolution. Diego's interest in the Workers
Movement clearly show in the mural below, which shows Frida Kahlo,
Diego's third wife and longtime (1929 to 1954) partner, handing out guns
to workers who have decided to fight:
1929
Diego and Frida
1930
In the United States he painted frescoes in the luncheon club
of the Stock Exchange and in the Fine Arts Building, both in
San Francisco, and murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts,
giving his interpretation of industrial America as
exemplified in Detroit.
http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0842002.html
Frozen
Assets
1931
Allegory of San
Francisco
1931
Diego
and Frida
1932
In 1933 Diego started work on a mural, Man at the Crossroads, in Radio City in
the Rockefeller Center in New York. However, a conflict arose over a portrait of
Lenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, and the mural was chipped off the wall
and destroyed February 9, 1934. The picture below was shot before the
mural was broken into into pieces:
Diego was determined to complete the mural, but in a different place, and after
doing several murals at the New Workers School, including the Workers of the Worl
panel, he left the US, after working a few years in California, Detroit and New York.
Then he did a new version of the Crossroads mural, called Man,
Controller of the Universe, in Mexico City. Below is a detail:
To the right of Lenin, the founder
of the Soviet Union, we spot
Leon Trotsky, another principal
leader of the Russian Revolution.
In his later years, Leon moved to
Mexico, where he was a
close friend of Diego.
Epic of the Mexican People - Mexico Today and Tomorrow, 1934-35, Palacio Naciona
Detail from the
"Man, Controller of the Universe"
mural in Mexico City,
painted in 1934.
The man in the center
is Lenin,
symbolically
clasping the hands
of a black American,
a white Russian soldier,
and a worker, as allies
of the future.
The mural is a reconstruction of
another mural in the Rockefeller
Center in Radio City,
which was destroyed after a
major political
fracas. Basically, it was
politically unacceptable to
depict Lenin,the preeminent
founder of the Soviet Union,
as the center of the inevitable
alliance between the Russian
and American (people).
Frida Kahló shared
Diego Rivera’s
revolutionary
feelings, shown here
demonstrating in 1936.
Diego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, and Andre Breton, 1938
Diego Rivera remained loyal to the revolutionary cause all his life, and below we see
him, speaking to the Mexican Communist Party, late in his life.
Lupe Marin, Diego's
second wife (1922-27), 1938.
Las
Manos
De Dr.
Moore
1940
Escuela de
San Francisco
1940
The Great City of Tenochtitlan, 1945, National Palace,
Mexico City
Retrato de
Dolores
Olmedo
1955
1949
El estudio
del pintor
1954
In 1956 the artist went to Moscow for an operation.
Several months before his death he announced
his affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church.
El desfile del
Primero de mayo
de Moscu
1956
I am Diego.
I paint what
I see.
1886-1957