Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a Mexican painter. His large helped establish the Mexican muralism in Mexican art and international art.
Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted in, among other places, Mexico City, Chapingo, and Cuernavaca, Mexico; and San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. In 1931, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan. That was before he completed his 27-mural series known as Detroit Industry Murals.
Rivera had four wives and numerous children, including at least one illegitimate daughter. His first child and only son died at the age of two. His third wife was fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he had a volatile relationship that continued until her death. His previous two marriages, ending in divorce, were respectively to a fellow artist and a novelist, and his final marriage was to his agent.
Due to his importance in the country's art history, the government of Mexico declared Rivera's works as monumentos históricos.
Personal life
Rivera was born on December 8, 1886, in
Guanajuato,
Mexico, to María del Pilar Barrientos and Diego Rivera Acosta, a well-to-do couple.
His twin brother Carlos died at the age of two.
[ online biography Retrieved October 13, 2010]
His mother María del Pilar Barrientos was said to have converso ancestry (Spanish ancestors who were forced to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in the 15th and 16th centuries).
Rivera began drawing at the age of three, a year after his twin brother died. When he was caught drawing on the walls of the house, his parents installed chalkboards and canvas on the walls to encourage him.
Marriages and family
After moving to
Paris, Rivera met
Angelina Beloff, an artist from the pre-Revolutionary Russian Empire. They married in 1911, and had a son, Diego (1916–1918), who died young. During that time, Rivera also had a relationship with painter
Marie Vorobieff, who gave birth to a daughter named
Marika Rivera in 1918 or 1919.
[Angelina Beloff, Memorias]
Rivera divorced Beloff and married Guadalupe Marín as his second wife in June 1922, after having returned to Mexico. They had two daughters, Ruth and Guadalupe.
He was still married when he met art student Frida Kahlo in Mexico. They began a passionate affair and, after he divorced Marín, Rivera married Kahlo on August 21, 1929. He was 42 and she was 22. Their mutual infidelities and his violent temper resulted in divorce in 1939, but they remarried December 8, 1940, in San Francisco. A year after Kahlo's death, on July 29, 1955, Rivera married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946. In his later years Rivera lived in the United States and Mexico. Rivera died on November 24, 1957, at the age of 70. He was buried at the Panteón de Dolores in Mexico City.
Personal beliefs
Rivera was an
atheist. His mural
Dreams of a Sunday in the Alameda depicted Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign that read, "God does not exist". This work caused a furor, but Rivera refused to remove the inscription. The painting was not shown for nine years – until Rivera agreed to remove the inscription. He said, "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."
Art education and circle
From the age of ten, Rivera studied art at the Academy of San Carlos in
Mexico City. He was sponsored to continue study in Europe by Teodoro A. Dehesa Méndez, the governor of the State of
Veracruz. After arriving in Europe in 1907, Rivera first went to Madrid, Spain to study with Eduardo Chicharro.
From there he went to Paris, a destination for young European and American artists and writers, who settled in inexpensive flats in Montparnasse. His circle frequented La Ruche, where his Italian friend Amedeo Modigliani painted his portrait in 1914.
In those years, some prominent young painters were experimenting with an art form that would later be known as Cubism, a movement led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. From 1913 to 1917, Rivera enthusiastically embraced this new style.
Rivera claimed in his autobiography that, while in Mexico in 1904, he engaged in cannibalism, pooling his money with others to "purchase cadavers from the city morgue" and particularly "relishing women's brains in vinaigrette".[Rivera, Diego, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography (with Gladys March), New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991, p. 20; originally published by The Citadel Press, New York, 1960.][ Sleeping With the Enemy][ An experiment in cannibalism] This claim has been considered factually suspect[ Lewis F. Petrinovich, The Cannibal Within, Transaction Publishers, 2000, ] or an elaborate lie.[ Pete Hamill, Diego Rivera, Harry N. Abrams, 1999, ] He wrote in his autobiography: "I believe that when man evolves a civilization higher than the mechanized but still primitive one he has now, the eating of human flesh will be sanctioned. For then man will have thrown off all of his superstitions and irrational taboos."[Rivera, Diego, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography (with Gladys March), 1991, p. 21.]
Career in Mexico
In 1920, urged by Alberto J. Pani, the Mexican ambassador to France, Rivera left France and traveled through Italy studying its art, including
Renaissance . After José Vasconcelos became Minister of Education, Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 to become involved in the government sponsored Mexican
mural program planned by Vasconcelos.
The program included such
Mexican people artists as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and
Rufino Tamayo, and the French artist
Jean Charlot. In January 1922,
he painted–experimentally in encaustic–his first significant mural
Creation in the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City while guarding himself with a pistol against
right-wing students.
In the autumn of 1922, 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
(including its Central Committee). His murals, subsequently painted only in
fresco, are about Mexican society and reflected the country's 1910 Revolution. Rivera developed his own native style based on large, simplified figures and bold colors with an
Aztec influence clearly present in murals at the Secretariat of Public Education in
Mexico City begun in September 1922, intended to consist of one hundred and twenty-four frescoes, and finished in 1928.
Rivera's art work, in a fashion similar to the
of the
Maya art, tells stories. The mural En el Arsenal (
In the Arsenal)
shows on the right-hand side
Tina Modotti holding an ammunition belt and facing Julio Antonio Mella, in a light hat, and
Vittorio Vidali behind in a black hat. However, the En el Arsenal detail shown does not include the right-hand side described nor any of the three individuals mentioned; instead it shows the left-hand side with Frida Kahlo handing out munitions.
Leon Trotsky lived with Rivera and Kahlo for several months while exiled in Mexico.
[Chasteen, John Charles. Born in Blood and Fire, W. W. Norton & Company, 2006, p. 225.] Some of Rivera's most famous murals are featured at the National School of Agriculture (Chapingo Autonomous University of Agriculture) at
Chapingo near Texcoco (1925–1927), in the Cortés Palace in
Cuernavaca (1929–30), and the National Palace in Mexico City (1929–30, 1935).
Rivera painted murals in the main hall and corridor at the Chapingo Autonomous University of Agriculture (UACh). He also painted a fresco mural titled Tierra Fecundada
The corpses of revolutionary heroes Emiliano Zapata and Otilio Montano are shown in graves, their bodies fertilizing the maize field above. A sunflower in the center of the scene "glorifies those who died for an ideal and are reborn, transfigured, into the fertile cornfield of the nation", writes Rodrigues. The mural also depicts Rivera's wife Guadalupe Marin as a fertile nude goddess and their daughter Guadalupe Rivera y Marin as a cherub.
Later years
In the autumn of 1927, Rivera went to
Moscow, Soviet Union, having accepted a government invitation to take part in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. The following year, while still in the Soviet Union, he met American Alfred H. Barr Jr., who would soon become Rivera's friend and patron. Barr was the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Although commissioned to paint a mural for the Red Army Club in Moscow, in 1928 Rivera was ordered by authorities to leave the country because, he suspected, of "resentment on the part of certain Soviet artists."[Rivera, Diego, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography (with Gladys March), 1991, p. 93.] He returned to Mexico. In 1929, after the assassination of former president Álvaro Obregón the previous year, the government suppressed the Mexican Communist Party. That year Rivera was expelled from the party because of his suspected Leon Trotsky sympathies. In addition, observers noted that his 1928 mural In the Arsenal includes the figures of communists Tina Modotti, Cuban Julio Antonio Mella, and Italian Vittorio Vidali. After Mella was murdered in January 1929, allegedly by Stalinism Assassination Vidali, Rivera was accused of having had advance knowledge of a planned attack.
After divorcing his second wife, Guadalupe (Lupe) Marin, Rivera married the much younger Frida Kahlo in August 1929. They had met when she was a student, and she was 22 years old when they married; Rivera was 42. Also in 1929, American journalist Ernestine Evans's book The Frescoes of Diego Rivera, was published in New York City; it was the first English-language book on the artist. In December, Rivera accepted a commission from the American ambassador to Mexico to paint murals in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca, where the US had a consulate.
In September 1930, Rivera accepted a commission by architect Timothy L. Pflueger for two works related to his design projects in San Francisco. Rivera and Kahlo went to the city in November. Rivera painted a mural for the City Club of the Pacific Exchange for US$2,500.
In November 1931, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City mounted a retrospective exhibition of Rivera's work; Kahlo attended with him.[Gerry Souter (2012). Kahlo. New York: Parkstone International.
. p. 18.] Between 1932 and 1933, Rivera completed a major commission: twenty-seven fresco panels, entitled Detroit Industry, on the walls of an inner court at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Part of the cost was paid by Edsel Ford, scion of the entrepreneur.
During the McCarthyism of the 1950s, a was placed in the courtyard defending the artistic merit of the murals while attacking his politics as "detestable."
His mural Man at the Crossroads, originally a three-paneled work,
When Rivera refused to remove Lenin from the painting, he was ordered to leave the US. One of Rivera's assistants managed to take a few photographs of the work so Diego was able to later recreate it. American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote six "irony-laden" poems about the mural.
On June 5, 1940, invited again by Pflueger, Rivera returned for the last time to the United States to paint a ten-panel mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. His work, Pan American Unity was completed November 29, 1940. Rivera painted in front of attendees at the Exposition, which had already opened. He received US$1,000 per month and US$1,000 for travel expenses.
In 1946-47, Rivera painted A Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Park, a fresco that featured a fully elaborated figure of La Calavera Catrina. This character, which was created by José Guadalupe Posada, originally consisted of a print depicting the head and shoulders of a skeletal woman in a big hat. Rivera endowed his Catrina figure with indigenous features and thus transformed her into a nationalist icon. Catrina is the most common image associated with Day of the Dead.
Membership in AMORC
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 after an ancient indigenous god. He painted an image of
Quetzalcoatl for the local temple.
[Raquel Tibol, "Apareció la serpiente: Diego Rivera y los rosacruces," Proceso 701 (April 9, 1990), pp. 50–53.]
In 1954, Rivera tried to be readmitted into the Mexican Communist Party. He had been expelled in part because of his support of Trotsky, who had been exiled and assassinated years before in Mexico. Rivera was required to justify his AMORC activities. At the time, the Mexican Communist Party excluded persons involved in Freemasonry, and regarded AMORC as suspiciously similar to Freemasonry.[Tibol, "Apareció la serpiente," p.53] Rivera told his questioners that, by joining AMORC, he wanted to infiltrate a typical "Yankee" organization on behalf of Communism. However, he also claimed that AMORC was "essentially materialist, insofar as it only admits different states of energy and matter, and is based on ancient Egyptian occult knowledge from Amenhotep IV and Nefertiti."[Diego Rivera, Arte y política, México: Grijalbo, 1979, p. 354. .]
Representation in other media
Diego Rivera has been portrayed in several films. He was played by Rubén Blades in
Cradle Will Rock (1999), by
Alfred Molina in
Frida (2002), and (in a brief appearance) by José Montini in
Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015).
Barbara Kingsolver's novel, The Lacuna features Rivera, Kahlo, and Leon Trotsky as major characters. An important scene of the Netflix television series Sense8 (Episode S1E8 Death Doesn't Let You Say Goodbye, broadcast in 2015) is played in the Anahuacalli Museum, called “Diego Rivera Museum” by the Lito character. He and his co-sensate, Nomi, discuss about Rivera sitting in front of what is supposed to be a sketch of Rivera's Man at the Crossroads mural for the Rockefeller Center, destroyed in 1933 by Rockefeller.
Autobiography
My Life, My Art: An Autobiography, by Diego Rivera, with Gladys March,
[Rivera, Diego, My Art, My Life: An Autobiography (with Gladys March), New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1991; originally published by The Citadel Press, New York, 1960.] was published posthumously in 1960. Beginning with a 1944 interview for a newspaper article, March "spent several months each year with Rivera, eventually filling 2,000 pages with his recollections and interpretations of his art and life", and compiled an autobiography, written in the first person.
[ My Art, My Life: An Autobiography]
Gallery
Paintings
Diego Rivera - Self-portrait with Broad-Brimmed Hat - Google Art Project.jpg| Self-portrait with Broad-Brimmed Hat, 1907, 84.5 × 61.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera - Avila Morning (The Ambles Valley) - Google Art Project.jpg| Avila Morning (The Ambles Valley), 1908, 97 × 123 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera - Street in Ávila (Ávila Landscape) - Google Art Project.jpg| Street in Ávila (Ávila Landscape), 1908, 129 × 141 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera - El Picador - Google Art Project.jpg| El Picador, 1909, 177 × 113 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera - The House on the Bridge - Google Art Project.jpg| The House on the Bridge, 1909, 147 × 121 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera - After the Storm (The Grounded Ship) - Google Art Project.jpg| After the Storm (The Grounded Ship), 1910, 120.7 × 146.7 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera - Landscape - Google Art Project.jpg| Landscape, 1911. Frida Kahlo Museum.
Diego Rivera - Portrait of Adolfo Best Maugard - Google Art Project.jpg| Portrait of Adolfo Best Maugard, 1913, 227.5 × 161.5 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera, 1912-13, Adoration of the Virgin and Child, oil and encaustic on canvas, 150 x 120 cm, private collection.jpg| Adoration of the Virgin and Child, 1912–13, oil and encaustic on canvas, 150 × 120 cm, private collection
Diego Rivera - The Sun Breaking through the Mist - Google Art Project.jpg| The Sun Breaking through the Mist, 1913, 83.5 × 59 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera - The Woman at the Well - Google Art Project.jpg| The Woman at the Well, 1913, 145 × 125 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera - The Alarm Clock - Google Art Project.jpg| The Alarm Clock, 1914. Frida Kahlo Museum
Diego Rivera, 1914, Two Women (Dos Mujeres, portrait of Angelina Beloff and Maria Dolores Bastian ), oil on canvas, 197.5 x 161.3 cm, The Arkansas Arts Center, Little Rock, Arkansas.jpg| Two Women (Dos Mujeres, Portrait of Angelina Beloff and Maria Dolores Bastian), 1914, 197.5 × 161.3 cm. Arkansas Arts Center
Diego Rivera, 1914, Portrait de Messieurs Kawashima et Foujita, oil and collage on canvas, 78.5 x 74 cm, private collection.jpg| Portrait de Messieurs Kawashima et Foujita, 1914, oil and collage on canvas, 78.5 × 74 cm. Private collection
Diego Rivera - Young Man with a Fountain Pen - Google Art Project.jpg| Young Man with a Fountain Pen, 1914, 79.5 × 63.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera - El Rastro - Google Art Project.jpg| El Rastro, 1915, 27.5 × 38.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
RamónGómezdelaSerna.JPG| Portrait of Ramón Gómez de la Serna, 1915, 109.6 × 90.2 cm. MALBA
Diego Rivera - Zapata-style Landscape - Google Art Project.jpg| Zapata-style Landscape, 1915, 145 × 125 cm. Museo Nacional de Arte
Diego Rivera, c.1915, Portrait of Marevna, oil on canvas, 145.7 x 112.7 cm, Art Institute of Chicago.jpg| Portrait of Marevna, c.1915, 145.7 × 112.7 cm. Art Institute of Chicago
Diego Rivera - Seated Woman (Women with the Body of a Guitar) - Google Art Project.jpg| Seated Woman (Women with the Body of a Guitar), 1915–16. Frida Kahlo Museum
Diego Rivera - Urban Landscape - Google Art Project.jpg| Urban Landscape, 1916. Frida Kahlo Museum
Diego Rivera, 1916, Still Life with Tulips (Naturaleza Muerta con Tulipanes), oil on canvas, 67.8 x 53.7cm.jpg| Still Life with Tulips ( Naturaleza Muerta con Tulipanes), 1916, oil on canvas, 67.8 × 53.7 cm
Le bock, Diego Rivera, 1917.jpg| Le bock, 1917
Diego Rivera - Knife and Fruit in Front of the Window - Google Art Project.jpg| Knife and Fruit in Front of the Window, 1917, 91.8 × 92.4 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera - Still Life with Utensils - Google Art Project.jpg| Still Life with Utensils, 1917, 71 × 54 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera - The Mathematician - Google Art Project.jpg| The Mathematician, 1919, 115.5 × 80.5 cm. Museo Dolores Olmedo
Diego Rivera, c.1916, Maternidad, Angelina y el niño Diego, oil on canvas, 134.5 x 88.5 cm, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil.jpg| Maternidad, Angelina y el niño Diego ( Motherhood, Angelina and the Child Diego), c. August 1916, oil on canvas, 134.5 × 88.5 cm, Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil. This work forms part of Rivera's Crystal Cubism period
Las afueras de París, Diego Rivera, 1918.jpg| The Outskirts of Paris, 1918
Naturaleza muerta con arrocera también conocida como naturaleza muerta con prensa de ajo, Diego Rivera, 1918.jpg| Still Life with Ricer also known as Still Life with Garlic Press, 1918
Bañista de Tehuantepec, Diego Rivera, 1923.jpg| Bather of Tehuantepec, 1923
Festival de flores, Diego Rivera, 1925.jpg| Flowers festival, 1925
Cargadora con perro, Diego Rivera, 1927.jpg| Cargadora con perro, 1927
Murals
File:Murales Rivera - Ausbeutung durch die Spanier 1 perspective.jpg|Mural of exploitation of Mexico by Spanish conquistadores, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City (1929–1945)
File:Murales Rivera - Markt in Tlatelolco 3.jpg|Mural of the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City
File:La Gran Tenochtitlan.JPG|Mural of the Aztec market of Tlatelolco, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City
File:Murales Rivera - Gold.jpg|Mural showing Aztec production of gold, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City
File:Celebrations and Ceremonies Totonaca Culture full.JPG|Mural showing Totonaca celebrations and ceremonies, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City
File:Mexico - Bellas Artes - Fresque Riviera « Man at the Crossroads ».JPG|Detail of Man, Controller of the Universe, fresco at Palacio de Bellas Artes showing Leon Trotsky, Friedrich Engels, and Karl Marx
File:Detalle de Lenin.jpg|Detail of Man, Controller of the Universe, fresco at Palacio de Bellas Artes showing Vladimir Lenin
File:The Kid - Diego Rivera.jpg|Mural (detail) Sueño de una Tarde Dominical en la Alameda Central in Mexico City, featuring Rivera and Frida Kahlo standing by La Calavera Catrina (width: 15.6 m)
File:Mural Diego Rivera.jpg|Mural at the National Palace, Mexico City
File:RiveraMuralNationalPalace.jpg|Diego Rivera's mural The History of Mexico at the National Palace in Mexico City
File:Murales Rivera - Treppenhaus 6.jpg|Detail of The History of Mexico showing betrayed revolution at Palacio Nacional, Mexico City
File:Palacio de Bellas Artes - Mural El Hombre in cruce de caminos Rivera 3.jpg|Recreation of Man at the Crossroads (renamed Man, Controller of the Universe), originally created in 1934 (detail)
File:Palacio_Nacional_Murals_view.JPG|View of the Murals by Diego Rivera in the Palacio Nacional
Image:Rivera detroit industry north.jpg| Detroit Industry, North Wall, 1932–33. Detroit Institute of Arts
Image:Rivera detroit industry south.jpg| Detroit Industry, South Wall, 1932–33. Detroit Institute of Arts
Sculptures
File:Cárcamo de Dolores 09.jpg|Tlaloc Fountain in Cárcamo de Dolores, Mexico City, 1951
File:Diego Rivera's Mural in Acapulco, Mexico.jpg|3D mural of Quetzalcóatl in the Exekatlkalli (Casa de los Vientos) in Acapulco, Guerrero, 1957
See also
Further reading
-
Aguilar, Louis. " Detroit was muse to legendary artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo". The Detroit News. April 6, 2011
-
Azuela, Alicia. Diego Rivera en Detroit. Mexico City: UNAM 1985
-
Bloch, Lucienne. "On location with Diego Rivera." Art in America 74 (February 1986, pp. 102–23
-
Craven, David. Diego Rivera as Epic Modernist. New York: G.K. Hall 1997
-
Dickerman, Leah, and Anna Indych-López. Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art 2011
-
Downs, Linda. Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals. Detroit: The Detroit Institute of Arts 1999
-
Evans, Robert Joseph. "Painting and Politics: The Case of Diego Rivera." New Masses (February 1932) 22-25
-
González Mello, Renato. "Manuel Gamio, Diego Rivera and the Politics of Mexican Anthropology." RES 45 (Spring 2004) 161-85
-
Lee, Anthony. Painting on the Left: Rivera, Radical Politics, and San Francisco's Public Murals. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1999
-
Robert Linsley. "Utopia Will Not be Televised: Rivera at Rockefeller Center." Oxford Art Journal 17, no. 2 (1994) 48-62.
-
Moyssén, Xavier, ed. Diego Rivera: Textos de arte. Mexico City: UNAM 1986
-
-
Rivera, Diego. Arte y política, Raquel Tibol, ed. Mexico City Grijalbo 1979
-
Rivera, Diego and Gladys March. My Life, Life: An Autobiography. New York: Dover Publications 1960
-
Rodrigues, Antonio. "Canto a la tierra: Los murales de Diego Rivera en la Capilla de Chapingo." (trans. Allyson Cadwell) Texcoco: Universidad Autonoma Chapingo, 1986 (1st reprint, 2000)
-
Rochfort, Desmond. Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros, London: Laurence King, 1993
-
Siqueiros, David Alfaro. "Rivera's Counter-Revolutionary Road." New Masses May 29, 1934
-
Wolfe, Bertram. The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera. New York: Stein and Day 1963
-
Wolfe, Bertram and Diego Rivera. Portrait of Mexico. New York: Covici, Friede Publishers 1937
External links
