Diego Rivera

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“ “ 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.” Diego Rivera

Why should we study Diego Rivera?

• The answer is simply that Rivera was one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. He was a legend in his own time. The effect of his art can be compared to that of Michelangelo. We can learn about history and ourselves through the murals created by Diego Rivera whose dream was to be the artist of the Americas.

• http://www.yale.edu/ynhti/curriculum/units/1999/2/99.02.06.x.html

Diego Rivera was bornDecember 8, 1886,in Guanajuato, Mexico, to Diego and Maria Barrientos Rivera. Histwin brother, Carlos, died 2 years later. By the age of 2, he was already drawing and his father set up a studio for him before he could even read. They lived in Guanajuato until 1892, when they moved to Mexico City. 

Guanajuato

La calleDe Avila1908

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 Riverawas well established as a painter.

House Over the Bridge 1909

Diego's father, a liberal and anti-religious man, was on the City Council in Guanajuato. Diego's two aunts, who lived with the family, were ratherreligious.  Diego was interested in military issues, and he was especially fascinated by the Russian army and the conflict it was facing; the Tsar and the Orthodox Church versus Marxist Revolutionaries.

Diego Rivera, self portrait 1907

In 1907 Diego went to Spain.  He travelled extensively in Spain, and also went to France, Belgium, and England.  In Brussels in 1909 he metAngelina 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 DiegoRivera 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 bycelebrated 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 ofTwo Women

Sailor at Breakfast

1914

Portrait of Ramón Gomezde la Serna, 1915

The Architect1915

The First World War broke out in Europe. In Mexico the revolutionary folk hero Emiliano Zapata battled to return theland to the people.  It was in these years Diego Rivera became a revolutionary himself. His friend, David Sternberg, the Soviet People's Commissar of Fine Arts invited him to Russia, but Diego felt called to return to Mexico and returned in 1921.

Emiliano Zapata

Pancho Villa, revolutionary del Norte, Emiliano Zapata, revolutionarydel Sur.

Zapatista Landscape:The Guerrilla

An expression of hisMexican heritageand the growing callof the Mexican Revolution surrounding Diego.

1915

Motherhood:Angelina and the Child Diego1916

SelfPortrait1918

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 theautumn 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.”

MURAL O FRESCO

Returning in 1921 to Mexico, he painted, with theassistance of younger artists, large murals dealing with the life, history, and social problemsof Mexico,in the Preparatory School and the Ministry of Education in Mexico City and the Agricultural School of Chapingo. To the peasantsand workers he becamea sort of prophet.

http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0842002.html

First Mural, 1922-1923 The Creation

Day of The Dead1924Ministry ofEducation

Burning of the Judases1924Ministry ofEducation

La Molendera1924

Flower Day1925

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 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 Frida1930

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

FrozenAssets1931

Allegory of SanFrancisco 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 walland 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 afterdoing several murals at the New Workers School, including the Workers of the World Unitepanel, 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 Nacional, Mexico City

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 sharedDiego Rivera’s revolutionaryfeelings, shown heredemonstrating 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 ManosDe Dr.Moore1940

Escuela deSan Francisco1940

The Great City of Tenochtitlan, 1945, National Palace, Mexico City

Retrato deDoloresOlmedo1955

1949

El estudiodel pintor1954

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 delPrimero de mayo de Moscu1956

I am Diego.I paint whatI see.

1886-1957