Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera (December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), (full name Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez) was a cubist painter and muralist living in Mexico.

Diego is perhaps best known by the world public for painting a vast mural in the 1930s featuring early communist leaders juxtaposed with the Founding Fathers of the United States in the lobby of the Rockefeller Building. That work was quickly destroyed by angry Rockefeller staff people before it could be completed in that location; see the movie Cradle Will Rock for a reenactment.

Background

Rivera, born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, Mexico, was of Jewish Converso heritage and Catholic upbringing, but a professed atheist and communist for most, if not all, of his life. He is said to be regarded in Latin America today as a folk hero. From a common-law marriage to the artist Angelina Beloff he had a son, Diego Jr., who did not survive infancy, and from a relationship with the Russian emigrée painter Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (Marevna) he also had a daughter, Marika Rivera. His marriage to the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo was childless after a miscarriage, but he nevertheless spent a rocky lifetime relationship with her.

Early career in Europe

On his arrival in Europe in 1907 Rivera initially went to study in Barcelona, Spain, and from there proceeded to Paris, France, to live and work with the great gathering of artists in Montparnasse, especially at La Ruche, where his friend Amedeo Modigliani painted his portrait in 1914.The circle of close friends that included further Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Modigliani's wife Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, gallery owner Leopold Zborowski, and Moise Kisling, was captured for posterity by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (Marevna) in her painting "Homage to Friends from Montparnasse" (1962).[http://www.rusmuseum.ru/eng/exhibitions/?id=140&year=2003&pic=4

Paris in those years was witnessing the emergence of cubism in paintings by such eminent painters as Picasso, Braque and Cezanne. From 1913 to 1918 Rivera himself enthusiastically embraced this new school of art, as his masterly cubist paintings from this time demonstrate. His paintings began to attract attention; and was able to display them at several exhibitions.

Career in Mexico

In 1920 Rivera left France and, travelling via Italy, returned in 1921 to Mexico, where he continued his prolific career as an artist. Having been born in Guanajuato, he now became involved in the new Mexican mural movement. With such Mexican artists as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo, and the French artist Jean Charlot, he began to experiment with fresco painting on large walls. Rivera soon developed his own style of large, simplified figures and bold colours. He had also become interested in left-wing politics. Thus when he painted his first mural, he presented ethnic Mexican subjects in a political context. Many of his murals deal symbolically with Mexican society and thought after the country's 1910 Revolution. His art, in a fashion similar to the stellae of the Maya tell stories. One mural “En el Arsenal” 'in the arsenal' ^* which shows to the left Vittorio Vidale, Tina Modotti (holding an ammunition belt), and Julio Antonio Mella (with hat) is said by some to elucidate the political murder of Mella. Rivera's radical political beliefs, his attacks on the church, and clergy, as well as his flirtations with trotskyites and left wing assassins made him a controversial figure even in communist circles. Some of Rivera's best murals are in the National Palace in Mexico City and at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, near Texcoco.

Later work abroad

In the autumn of 1927 Rivera, accepting an invitation to take part in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution, aved in Moscow, Russia; but in 1928 he was expelled by the authorities because of his involvement in anti-Soviet politics and returned to Mexico. His mural "In the Arsenal" is interpreted by some as evidence of Vittorio Vidale's murder of Julio Antonio Mella, his involvement with Tina Modotti, and to relate to his expulsion from the Mexican Communist Party.

Rivera then painted several significant works in the United States. From 1930 to 1933 he completed a number of frescoes in the United States, mostly consisting of industrial life.

Perhaps his finest surviving work in the United States are the 27 fresco panels entitled Detroit Industry on the walls of an inner court at the Detroit Institute of Arts that he painted in 1932. His mural Man at the Crossroads, begun in 1933 for the Rockefeller Center in New York City, was removed after a furor erupted in the press because at the time there was a fear of a violent revolution and his work contained a portrait of Lenin. As a result of the negative publicity, a further commission to paint a mural for an exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair was cancelled. In December 1933, an angry and humiliated Rivera returned to Mexico. He repainted the work in 1934 in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. This version was called Man, Controller of the Universe. In 1940 Rivera returned to the United States to paint a ten panel mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.

Marriage to Frida Kahlo

Several marriages and love affairs later Rivera was introduced to Frida Kahlo, a Communist, who herself went on to become a famous and noted Mexican painter in the later stages of her life. They married for the first time in 1929, when he was 42 years old and she was 22; but owing to his infidelity and violent temper they divorced in 1939, only to re-marry December 8, 1940 in San Francisco, although their marriage was never to be conventional. Despite her serious earlier accident, Kahlo conceived, but then suffered a miscarriage; and their marriage remained childless.

After Kahlo's demise in 1954 Rivera married once more, this time to publisher Emma Hurtado (1955).

Political leanings

Rivera was a communist of Trotskyist learnings. Having joined the International Communist League, Rivera became friends with Soviet exile Leon Trotsky, who for a while moved into his home in Mexico, and had an alleged affair with Frida Kahlo. Rivera eventually became angry with Trotsky, probably over the affair, and threw him out. Shortly thereafter, Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico. Rivera never formally renounced Trotskyism.

Death

Not quite a year after receiving national homage on the occasion of his 70th birthday, Diego Rivera died on November 24, 1957 in Mexico City.

External links

Artcyclopedia - Links to Rivera's works
Artchive - Biography and images of Rivera's works
Short biography with photograph
"Chronology & photographs" (year by year, animated)
Detailed biography (with timeline and paintings)
Biographical note with photographs
Short illustrated biography (in Dutch)
Biographical note (with self-portrait and photographs with Trotsky and Frida Kahlo)
Self-portrait from 1941 and other paintings
Marela Trejo Zacarías: "Visual Biography of Diego Rivera"
Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts
Diego Rivera Mural Project
Diego Rivera House Museum
Virtual Diego Rivera Web Museum
"Diego Rivera: Master Cubist" (12th painting in sequence: "Motherhood – Angelina and the Child Diego" (1916) depicting his common-law wife with their baby son.)
Painting by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (Marevna) depicting on the very left herself, Diego Rivera and their daughter Marika, and on the right their mutual friends from Montparnasse, namely (top left to right:) Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani and his wife Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, the gallery owner Leopold Zborowski, and (bottom right corner:) Moise Kisling.

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