Dieg

o Ri

vera

By: Sage Adams

Diego Rivera was associated with the muralist movement.

“A communist, he was often criticized for creating paintings that were too controversial.

Along with José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros, he is considered one of the

“big three,” most important Mexican muralists.”

http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/20thcenturylatinamerica/p/diegorivera.htm

The Muralist Movement:1. Began about 19132. “Gerardo Murillo of Guadalajara painted the first modern mural

in Mexico and pioneered the idea that Mexican art should reflect Mexican life”

3. “After the revolution, the new government commissioned works of public art that supported and affirmed the values of the revolution and the Mexican identity: a broader knowledge of revolutionary history and the Mexican people’s pre-Columbian past.”

4. “All believed that art, the highest form of human expression, was a key force in social revolution.”

http://www.sbcounty.gov/museum/media/press-kit/contretas/contreras-media-kit-mural-tradition.pdf

Rivera’s Personal VisionWhen he traveled to Paris in 1909 he was influenced by post-impressionism and

cubism, especially Picasso’s cubist works, but after he did some of his own he didn’t like it anymore so it went to Italy and studied Renaissance art. That’s

when he decided he wanted to paint things that would “speak directly to the common people”.

During the revolution he felt his part was to educate Mexicans about their history so he painted things that illustrated “Hispanic culture's proud pre-Columbian past, their conquest by the Spanish, the conversion from their

native religion to Catholicism, the submission of the working class by agricultural tyrannies, and the Mexican Revolution”.

http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

The Architect, 1915Diego RiveraImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

Maternity, 1916Diego RiveraImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

The Aztec World, fresco 1929-1935 Diego RiveraImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

Blood of the Revolutionary Martyrs Fertilizing the Earth 1926 Diego RiveraImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

Chapingo Chapel: Subterannean Forces Murals 1926Diego RiveraImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

Along with Mexico’s history and revolution, Diego liked doing smaller paintings of ordinary

Mexican life; the earth, the farmer and the laborer.

http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

Dia de la Flor (Flower Day) 1925 Diego RiveraImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

The Flower Carrier (Cargador de Flores) 1935 San Francisco Museum of Modern Art San Francisco, CAImage Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

The next slide will show…In 1932 (after his divorce to his first wife and marriage to Frida Kahlo),

Diego comes to America to complete a commission for Edsel Ford. The commissioned murals are created in the garden Court of the Detroit Institute of Art, illustrating the work force of the Ford auto factory. By the following year, the murals are completed. It is quite ironic that Rivera, a communist, would create a mural for the greatest industrialist of the age, but the murals are subtly infused with his own ideologies. Rivera sees the Industrial Revolution as a liberator of the laborer. All of the workers in his paintings work together like cogs of a great machine, no one serving a greater role than any other. Above the murals, he creates more allegorical images relating to the power of the people, combining images of caucasian, oriental, hispanic and black figures. Industrialization, he felt, would equalize the races as well as the social classes.

Detroit Industry, North and South Walls 1932-1933 Diego Rivera

Image Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

The next slide:Rivera's next mural was created in the Rockefeller Center in New York City.

It would have a more controversial history. Known as "Man at the Crossroads", Rivera's long title for the fresco was "Man at crossroads looking with hope and high vision to the choosing of a new and better future". Though most of the mural was deemed successful and acceptable, Nelson Rockefeller asks Rivera to replace the face of Lenin (the communist leader) with that of an anonymous individual. Rivera offers to substitute Abraham Lincoln and other 19th century American figures for a group opposite Lenin. Unable to come to a satisfactory compromise, Rivera is discharged from the commission. The mural is destroyed. In 1934, Rivera reproduces a smaller version of the mural on a wall at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Man at the Crossroads (Hombre en una Encrucijada) Fresco, 1934Diego Rivera

Image Source: http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm

Test Questions:

1. What two things influenced Rivera when he traveled to Paris?

2. Rivera was considered one of the…?3. The three most common subjects of Rivera’s

“ordinary Mexican life” paintings were…?

4. Post-impressionism and cubism5. …”big three”6. …the earth, the farmer and the laborer

Video Links

• http://www.biography.com/people/diego-rivera-9459446

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irH3QTLYdpk

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HccjWNgdFH8

Citations:• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mural• http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/20thcenturylatinamerica/p/diegorivera.htm• http://www.naderlibrary.com/diego.galleryinfantbulb.htm• http://www.robinurton.com/history/frida-y-diego.htm