a biography of diego rivera

Diego Rivera

(1886-1957)

Who Was Diego Rivera?

Now thought to be one of the leading artists of the 20th century, Diego Rivera sought to make art that reflected the lives of the Mexican people. In 1921, through a government program, he started a series of murals in public buildings. Some were controversial; his Man at the Crossroads in New York City's RCA building, which featured a portrait of Vladmir Lenin, was stopped and destroyed by the Rockefeller family.

Rivera was born on December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato, Mexico. His passion for art emerged early on. He began drawing as a child. Around the age of 10, Rivera went to study art at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. One of his early influences was artist José Posada who ran a print shop near Rivera's school.

In 1907, Rivera traveled to Europe to further his art studies. There, he befriended many leading artists of the day, including Pablo Picasso. Rivera was also able to view influential works by Paul Gaugin and Henri Matisse, among others.

Famous Muralist

Rivera had some success as a Cubist painter in Europe, but the course of world events would strongly change the style and subject of his work. Inspired by the political ideals of the Mexican Revolution (1914-15) and the Russian Revolution (1917), Rivera wanted to make art that reflected the lives of the working class and native peoples of Mexico. He developed an interest in making murals during a trip to Italy, finding inspiration in the Renaissance frescos there.

Returning to Mexico, Rivera began to express his artistic ideas about Mexico. He received funding from the government to create a series of murals about the country's people and its history on the walls of public buildings. In 1922, Rivera completed the first of the murals at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City.

Commercial Success

In the 1930s and '40s, Rivera painted several murals in the United States. Some of his works created controversy, especially the one he did for the Rockefeller family in the RCA building in New York City. The mural, known as "Man at the Crossroads," featured a portrait of Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin. The artist had reportedly included Lenin in his piece to portray the turbulent political atmosphere at the time, which was largely defined by conflicting capitalist and socialist ideologies and escalating fears surrounding the Communist Party. The Rockefellers disliked Rivera's insertion of Lenin and, thusly, asked Rivera to remove the portrait, but the painter refused. The Rockefellers then had Rivera stop work on the mural.

In 1934, Nelson Rockefeller famously ordered the demolition of "Man at the Crossroads." Publish backlash against the Rockefellers ensued; after long proclaiming a deep dedication to the arts, the powerful family now looked both hypocritical and tyrannical. John D. Rockefeller Jr. later attempted to explain the destruction of the mural, stating, "The picture was obscene and, in the judgment of Rockefeller Center, an offense to good taste. It was for this reason primarily that Rockefeller Center decided to destroy it."

Later Life and Work

In the late 1930s, Rivera went through a slow period, in terms of work. He had no major mural commissions around this time so he devoted himself to painting other works. While they always had a stormy relationship, Rivera and Kahlo decided to divorce in 1939. But the pair reunited the following year and remarried. The couple hosted Communist exile Leon Trotsky at their home during this period.

Rivera returned to murals with one made for the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition held in San Franciso. In Mexico City, he spent from 1945 to 1951 working on a series of murals known as "From the Pre-Hispanic Civilization to the Conquest." His last mural was called "Popular History of Mexico."

By the mid-1950s, Rivera's health was in decline. He had traveled abroad for cancer treatment, but doctors were unable to cure him. Rivera died of heart failure on November 24, 1957, in Mexico City, Mexico.

Personal Life

Rivera lost his wife Kahlo, in 1954 and the following year, he married Emma Hurtado, his art dealer.

Since his death, Rivera is remembered as an important figure in 20th-century art. His childhood home is now a museum in Mexico. His life and relationship with Kahlo has been remained a subject of great fascination and speculation. On the big screen, actor Ruben Blades portrayed Rivera in the 1999 movie Cradle Will Rock . Alfred Molina later brought Rivera to life, co-starring with Salma Hayek in the 2002 acclaimed biographical film Frida .

QUICK FACTS

• Name: Diego Rivera
• Birth Year: 1886
• Birth date: December 8, 1886
• Birth City: Guanajuato
• Birth Country: Mexico
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Painter and muralist Diego Rivera sought to make art that reflected the lives of the working class and native peoples of Mexico.
• Astrological Sign: Sagittarius
• San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts
• Nacionalities
• Death Year: 1957
• Death date: November 24, 1957
• Death City: Mexico City
• Death Country: Mexico

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CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Diego Rivera Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/artists/diego-rivera
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: May 27, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 2, 2014

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Diego Rivera

Mexican Painter and Muralist

Summary of Diego Rivera

Widely regarded as the most influential Mexican artist of the 20 th century, Diego Rivera was truly a larger-than-life figure who spent significant periods of his career in Europe and the U.S., in addition to his native Mexico. Together with David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco , Rivera was among the leading members and founders of the Mexican Muralist movement. Deploying a style informed by disparate sources such as European modern masters and Mexico's pre-Columbian heritage, and executed in the technique of Italian fresco painting, Rivera handled major themes appropriate to the scale of his chosen art form: social inequality; the relationship of nature, industry, and technology; and the history and fate of Mexico. More than half a century after his death, Rivera is still among the most revered figures in Mexico, celebrated for both his role in the country's artistic renaissance and re-invigoration of the mural genre as well as for his outsized persona.

Accomplishments

• Rivera made the painting of murals his primary method, appreciating the large scale and public accessibility—the opposite of what he regarded as the elitist character of paintings in galleries and museums. Rivera used the walls of universities and other public buildings throughout Mexico and the United States as his canvas, creating an extraordinary body of work that revived interest in the mural as an art form and helped reinvent the concept of public art in the U.S. by paving the way for the Federal Art Program of the 1930s.
• Mexican culture and history constituted the major themes and influence on Rivera's art. Rivera, who amassed an enormous collection of pre-Columbian artifacts, created panoramic portrayals of Mexican history and daily life, from its Mayan beginnings up to the Mexican Revolution and post-Revolutionary present, in a style largely indebted to pre-Columbian culture.
• A lifelong Marxist who belonged to the Mexican Communist Party and had important ties to the Soviet Union, Rivera is an exemplar of the socially committed artist. His art expressed his outspoken commitment to left-wing political causes, depicting such subjects as the Mexican peasantry, American workers, and revolutionary figures like Emiliano Zapata and Lenin. At times, his outspoken, uncompromising leftist politics collided with the wishes of wealthy patrons and aroused significant controversy that emanated inside and outside the art world.

The Life of Diego Rivera

When Diego Rivera first returned home to Mexico from his artistic studies in France, he was so overcome with joy that he fainted. Later, he said, "Great art is like a tree, which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own .. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican."

Important Art by Diego Rivera

View of Toledo

A stunning tribute to two of Rivera's favorite masters—El Greco and Paul Cézanne— View of Toledo exemplifies Rivera's tendency to unite traditional and more modern approaches in his work. The landscape is a reworking of the famous 1597 landscape painting by El Greco, whose work Rivera studied during his time in Spain; Rivera's version even deploys the same viewpoint as the Spanish Old Master. At the same time, the subdued palette, flattened forms, and unconventional use of perspective suggest the artist's reverence for Cézanne, his L'Estaque landscapes. This artwork also documents the beginning of Rivera's Cubist phase.

Oil on canvas - Fundacion Amparo R. de Espinosa, Puebla

Zapatista Landscape - The Guerrilla

In this work, painted during Rivera's sojourn in Paris, the artist deployed Cubism—a style he once characterized as a "revolutionary movement"—to depict the Mexican revolutionary leader Emiliano Zapata, here seen with attributes such as a rifle, bandolier, hat, and sarape . The work's collage-like approach is suggestive of the Synthetic rather than Analytic phase of Cubism. Executed at the height of the Mexican Revolution, the painting—later described by its creator as "probably the most faithful expression of the Mexican mood that I have ever achieved"—manifests the increasing politicization of Rivera's work.

Oil on canvas - Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City

Motherhood - Angelina and the Child

Motherhood is a modernizing, Cubist treatment on a perennial art historical theme: the Madonna and Child. In this painting, Angelina Beloff, Rivera's common-law wife for twelve years, holds their newborn son, Diego, who died of influenza just months after his birth. The painting beautifully illustrates Rivera's unique approach to Cubism, which rejected the somber, monochromatic palette deployed by artists such as Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque in favor of vivid colors more reminiscent of those used by Italian Futurist artists like Gino Severini or Giacomo Balla.

Oil on canvas - Museo de Arte Alvar y Carmen T. de Carrillo Gil, Mexico

His first commission from Mexican Minister of Education Jose Vasconcelos, Creation is the first of Rivera's many murals and a touchstone for Mexican Muralism. Treating, in the artist's words, "the origins of the sciences and the arts, a kind of condensed version of human history"—the work is a complex allegorical composition, combining Mexican, Judeo-Christian, and Hellenic motifs. It depicts a number of allegorical figures—among them Faith, Hope, Charity, Education, and Science—all seemingly represented with unmistakably Mexican features. The figure of Song was modeled on Guadalupe Marin, who later became Rivera's second wife. Through such features of the work as the use of gold leaf and the monumental, elongated figures, the mural reflects the importance of Italian and Byzantine art for Rivera's development.

Fresco in encaustic with gold leaf - Museo de San Idelfonso, Mexico City

Man, Controller of the Universe (Man in the Time Machine)

As its title indicates, the painting is a powerful representation of the human race "at the crossroads" of reinforcing or competing forces and ideologies: science, industrialization, Communism, and capitalism. Revealing Rivera's dedication to Communism and other left-wing causes, the painting has at its center a heroic worker surrounded by four propeller-like blades; it contrasts a mocking portrayal of society women, seen on the left, with a sympathetic portrayal of Lenin surrounded by proletarians of different races, on the right. Commissioned by the Mexican government, this painting is a smaller but nearly identical recreation of Man at the Crossroads , the Rockefeller-commissioned mural for the soon-to-be-completed Rockefeller Center. The New York City mural was destroyed a year before this work, amid controversy over Rivera's portrait of Lenin and his subsequent refusal to remove the image.

Fresco - Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City

Portrait of Lupe Marin

In this magnificent portrait of his second wife from whom he separated the previous decade, Rivera again reveals his profound artistic debt to the European painting tradition. Utilizing a device deployed by such artists as Velazquez, Manet, and Ingres—and which Rivera would himself use in his 1949 portrait of his daughter Ruth—he portrays his subject partially in reflection through his depiction of a mirror in the background. The painting's coloration and the subject's expressive hands call to mind another artistic hero, El Greco, while its composition and structure suggest the art of Cézanne.

Oil on canvas - Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City

The Detroit Industry Fresco Cycle

The twenty-seven panels comprising this cycle are a tribute to Detroit's manufacturing base and workforce of the 1930s and constitute the finest example of fresco painting in the United States. Here, Rivera takes large-scale industrial production as the subject of the work, depicting machinery with exceptional attention to detail and artistry. The overall iconography of the cycle reflects the duality concept of Aztec culture via the two sides of industry: the one beneficial to society (vaccines) and the other harmful (lethal gas). Other dichotomies recur in this work, as Rivera contrasts tradition and progress, industry and nature, and North and South America. He uses multiple allegories based on the history of the continents, as well as contemporary events to build a dramatic artwork.

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park

Rivera revisits the theme of Mexican history in this crowded, dynamic composition, replete with meaningful portraits, historical figures, and symbolic elements. Conceived as a festive pictorial autobiography, Rivera represents himself at the center as a child holding hands with the most celebrated of Guadalupe Posada's creations: the skeletal figure popularly known as "Calavera Catrina." He represents himself joining this quintessential symbol of Mexican popular culture and is shown to be protected by his wife, the painter Frida Kahlo, who holds in her hand the yin-yang symbol, the Eastern equivalent of Aztec duality. The mural combines the artist's own childhood experiences with the historical events and sites that took place in Mexico City's Alameda Park, such as the crematorium for the victims of the Inquisition during the times of Cortes, the U.S. army's encampment in the park in 1848, and the major political demonstrations of the 19 th century. As in many previous works, Rivera juxtaposes historical events and figures, deliberately rejecting the Western tradition of linear narrative.

Transportable fresco - Museo Mural Diego Rivera, Mexico City

Biography of Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera and his fraternal twin brother (who died at the age of two) were born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico. His parents were both teachers; his mother was a devoted Catholic mestiza (part European, part Indian) and his father, a liberal criollo (Mexican of European descent). Diego's exceptional artistic talent was obvious to his parents from an early age, and they set aside a room in the house for him in which he painted his first "murals" on the walls. When Diego was six, his family moved from Guanajuato to Mexico City, to avoid the tensions caused by his father's role as co-editor of the opposition newspaper El Democrata . Once in Mexico City, his mother decided to send Diego to the Carpantier Catholic College.

Early Training

By the age of ten, Rivera decided he wanted to attend art school, despite his father's desire that he pursue a military career. By the age of twelve, Rivera was enrolled full-time at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts, where he received training modeled on conservative European academies; one of his painting teachers had studied with Ingres, and another required Rivera to copy classical sculpture. Trained in traditional techniques in perspective, color, and the en plein air method, Rivera also received instruction from Gerardo Murillo, one of the ideological forces behind the Mexican artistic revolution and a staunch defender of indigenous crafts and Mexican culture. With Murillo's support, Rivera was awarded a travel grant to Europe in 1906.

In Spain, Rivera studied the work of El Greco, Velazquez, Goya, and the Flemish masters that he saw in the Prado Museum, and which provided him with a strong foundation for his later painting. At the studio of the Spanish realist painter Eduardo Chicharro, Rivera became acquainted with the leading figures of the Madrid avant-garde , including the Dada poet Ramon Gomez de la Serna and the writer Ramon Valle-Inclan.

In 1909 Rivera traveled to Paris and Belgium with Valle-Inclan, where he met the Russian painter Angelina Beloff who would be Rivera's partner for twelve years. Returning to Mexico City in 1910, Rivera was offered his first exhibition at the San Carlos Academy. Rivera's return coincided with the onset of the Mexican Revolution, which lasted until 1917. Despite the political upheaval, Rivera's exhibit was a great success, and the money earned from the sale of his work enabled him to return to Europe.

Back in Paris, Rivera became a fervent adherent of Cubism , which he regarded as a truly revolutionary form of painting. However, Rivera's difficult relationships with the other members of the movement came to a tumultuous end following a violent incident with the art critic Pierre Reverdy, resulting in a definitive break with the circle and the termination of his friendships with Picasso , Braque , Juan Gris , Fernand Leger , Gino Severini , and Jacques Lipchitz .

Rivera subsequently shifted his focus to the work of Cézanne and Neoclassical artists such as Ingres, as well as a rediscovery of figural painting. Receiving another grant to travel to Italy to study classical art , Rivera copied Etruscan, Byzantine , and Renaissance artworks, and developed a particular interest in the frescoes of the 14 th and 15 th centuries of the Italian Renaissance. In 1921, following the appointment of Jose Vasconcelos as the new Mexican Minister of Education, Rivera returned to his home country, leaving behind his partner, Angelina Beloff, as well as Marevna Stebelska, another Russian artist, with whom Rivera had a daughter, Marika, in 1919.

Mature Period

Rivera returned to Mexico with a reawakened artistic perspective, deeply influenced by his study of Classical and ancient art. There, he was afforded the opportunity to visit and study many pre-Columbian archaeological sites under the auspices of the Ministry of Education's art program. Yet his first mural painting, produced for the National Preparatory School and entitled Creation (1922), shows a strong influence of Western art. Rivera soon became involved with local politics through his membership in the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers and his entry into the Mexican Communist Party in 1922. At this time, he painted frescoes in the Ministry of Education in Mexico City and the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo. During the latter project, he became involved with the Italian photographer Tina Modotti , who had modeled for his murals; the affair prompted him to separate from his wife at the time, Lupe Marin.

In 1927, Rivera visited the Soviet Union to attend the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, an experience he found extremely inspiring. He spent nine months in Moscow, teaching monumental painting at the School of Fine Arts. Upon his return to Mexico, he married the painter Frida Kahlo , who was twenty-one years his junior, and became the director of the Academy of San Carlos. His radical ideas about education earned him enemies among the conservative faculty and student body; at the same time, he was expelled from the Communist Party for his cooperation with the government. Politically cornered, Rivera found support in the American ambassador to Mexico, Dwight W. Morrow, who commissioned him to paint a mural in the Cortes Palace in Cuernavaca depicting the history of that city. A great admirer of Rivera's work, Morrow offered the artist the opportunity to travel to the United States, all expenses paid. Rivera remained in the U.S. for four years. There, the always-prolific artist worked around the clock, painting murals in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit, celebrating the powerful forces of unions, education, industry, and art. In New York, he met with enormous popularity (his one-man show at The Museum of Modern Art had fifty-seven thousand visitors) as well as controversy (some of his murals were threatened with physical harm). Rivera's American adventure ended in 1933, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr., ordered the destruction of the mural he had commissioned for the lobby of Rockefeller Center, Man at the Crossroads , because of both Rivera's unwillingness to eliminate the portrait of Lenin and for what the Rockefeller family regarded as an offensive portrait of David Rockefeller.

Later Years and Death

After Rivera returned to Mexico, he and Kahlo shared a house-studio in a beautiful Bauhaus -style building in Mexico City that can still be visited today. From 1929 until 1945, Rivera worked on and off in the National Palace, creating some of his most famous murals there. In 1937, he and Kahlo helped Leon Trotsky - a major Russian Communist leader - and his wife obtain political exile; the Trotskys lived with Rivera and Kahlo for two years in the "Blue House" in the suburb of Coyoacan. Two years later, Rivera and Kahlo divorced, although they remarried a year later in San Francisco, while Rivera was working for the Golden Gate International Exposition. The two had a tremendously passionate, and an extremely tumultous relationship - one that can easily extrapolated by viewing her very personal artworks. The couple would ultimately remain together until Kahlo's death in 1954.

During his last years, Diego continued to paint murals, sometimes working on portable panels. He also produced a large number of oil portraits, usually of the Mexican bourgeoisie, children, or American tourists. These works are not always remarkable, and they are often infused with a kitschy aesthetic reminiscent of Pop art . However, they were very successful during his lifetime, and provided a way for the artist to acquire more pre-Columbian objects for his spectacular collection. Today, his collection is housed in the Anahuacalli Museum, a building inspired by the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan and designed by Rivera himself.

Widowed and already sick with cancer, Rivera married for the third time in 1955 to Emma Hurtado, his art dealer and rights holder since 1946. Following a trip to the Soviet Union made in the hope of curing his cancer, Rivera died in Mexico in 1957 at age seventy. His wish to have his ashes mingled with those of Kahlo was not honored, and he was buried in the Rotunda of Famous Men of Mexico.

The Legacy of Diego Rivera

Rivera saw the artist as a craftsman at the service of the community, who, as such, needed to deploy an easily accessible visual language. This concept greatly influenced American public art, helping give rise to governmental initiatives such as Franklin Roosevelt's Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration , whose artists depicted scenes from American life on public buildings. With his socially and politically expansive artistic vision, narrative focus, and use of symbolic imagery, Rivera inspired such diverse artists as Ben Shahn , Thomas Hart Benton , and Jackson Pollock .

Influences and Connections

Useful Resources on Diego Rivera

• Diego Rivera, 1886-1957: A Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art (Taschen Basic Art) Our Pick By Andrea Kettenmann
• Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera (Discovery Series) By Patrick Marnham
• Diego Rivera By Pete Hamill
• Diego Rivera, The Complete Murals Our Pick By Luis Martin Lozano, Juan Coronel Rivera
• Diego Rivera: The Detroit Industry Murals By Linda Bank Downs
• Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros Our Pick By Desmond Rochfort
• My Art, My Life: An Autobiography (Dover Fine Art, History of Art) Our Pick By Diego Rivera, Gladys March
• Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art Our Pick By Leah Dickerman, Anna Indych-Lopez
• The Diego Rivera Mural Project Info and Preservation of Diego Mural in San Francisco, CA
• Diego Rivera Web Museum Articles and works dedicated to the mexican Muralist
• Diego Rivera Experts
• Diego Rivera Celebrated by Google doodle By David Batty / The Guardian / December 7, 2011
• Time Capsule With Pulse on Present Our Pick By Karen Rosenberg / The New York Times / November 17, 2011
• The Mural Vanishes By Peter Catapano / The New York Times / April 1, 2011
• Kahlo and Rivera, Side by Side in Istanbul Our Pick By Susan Fowler / The New York Times / February 7, 2011
• Rebel without a pause: The Tempestuous Life of Diego Rivera By Jim Tuck / Mexconnect / October 9, 2008
• Rivera, Fridamania's Other Half, Gets His Due By Elisabeth Malkin / The New York Times / December 25, 2007
• Archives of American Art, The Smithsonian Photographs and documents on Rivera, and related artists
• The Cradle will Rock (1999) Rivera's Rockerfeller murals are part of the plot in this movie. Diego Rivera portrayed by Ruben Blades
• Frida (2002) Diego Rivera is portrayed by Alfred Molina in this main-stream movie

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Content compiled and written by The Art Story Contributors

Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors

Diego Rivera

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Diego Rivera ( Spanish pronunciation: [ˈdjeɣo riˈβeɾa] ; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the mural movement in Mexican and international art.

Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in, among other places, Mexico City, Chapingo, and Cuernavaca, Mexico; and San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City, United States. In 1931, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; this was before he completed his 27-mural series known as Detroit Industry Murals .

Rivera had four wives and numerous children, including at least one natural (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 fourth and final wife was his agent.

Due to his importance in the country's art history, the government of Mexico declared Rivera's works as monumentos históricos . As of 2018, Rivera holds the record for highest price at auction for a work by a Latin American artist. The 1931 painting The Rivals , part of the record-setting Collection of Peggy Rockefeller and David Rockefeller, sold for US$9.76 million.

This biography is from Wikipedia under an Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License . Spotted a problem? Let us know .

Mrs Helen Wills Moody

Diego Rivera: An expert guide to the artist, revolutionary and storyteller

Alastair Smart and Virgilio Garza, Head of Latin American Art at Christie’s, look at the life and art of the giant of modernism, and arguably the greatest painter in Mexico’s history

• Artist & Makers

Diego Rivera with his mural  El agua, el origen de la vida , ( Water, source of life ), Mexico City, 1951. Photo: © Centre Pompidou, MNAM-CCI, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais / Gisèle Freund, reproduction de Georges Meguerditchian. Artwork: © Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / DACS 2018

Born in the central Mexican city of Guanajuato in 1886, Diego Rivera went on to become one of the great Modernists of 20th-century art, as well as, arguably, the most important painter in his nation’s history.

Best-known for his murals on public buildings in Mexico and the United States, Rivera also made a number of easel paintings, watercolours and drawings. ‘Above all, he was a magnificent storyteller,’ says Virgilio Garza, Head of Latin American Art at Christie’s. ‘Rivera could tell tales on both an epic scale and a small, intimate one’.

In May 2018, his painting The Rivals   realised $9,762,500 in The Collection of David and Peggy Rockefeller sale , setting a world-record price at auction for not just Rivera but any Latin American artist.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), The Rivals , painted in 1931 . 60 x 50 in (152.4 x 127 cm). Sold for $9,762,500 on 9 May 2018 at Christie’s in New York. Artwork: © Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / DACS 2018

Rivera’s early career and Cubism

A child prodigy, he started drawing at three. By the age of 10, Rivera was enrolled full-time at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts, in Mexico City. In 1907, he moved to Europe, settling first in Spain and then Paris. His work from this period reveals the influence of a wealth of European masters: from El Greco to Cézanne.

A friend and rival of Picasso’s, Rivera made his name as part of the Cubist movement. One of his main works in this style was 1915’s Zapatista Landscape , which today forms part of the collection of the Museo Nacional de Arte in Mexico City.

When did Rivera start painting murals?

Rivera returned to his homeland in the early 1920s, shortly after the Mexican Revolution concluded. The artist was one of the revolution’s greatest champions, helping to spread the message of a new Mexico by painting vast, state-sponsored murals — on buildings such as the National Palace and the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. Here he connected the country’s revolutionary present to a heroic, ancient past.

‘Gone was the doubt which had tormented me in Europe,’ said Rivera, later in life. ‘I now painted as naturally as I breathed, spoke, or perspired’.

For Rivera, children were political — ‘They represented the hope of a new generation in a new Mexico’

Once back in Mexico, says his biographer Patrick Marnham in  Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera  (1988), ‘he now believed that an artist must be  engagé   and must not withdraw from society. Rivera challenged the stereotype of the artist as inarticulate genius.’

By the 1930s, he was being commissioned for murals in the United States too — in Detroit, San Francisco and New York — and had become a  bona fide   star of the art world. Rivera became only the second artist, after Henri Matisse, to be granted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.

Among his American patrons was Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, for whom he produced the aforementioned canvas,  The Rivals , depicting a traditional festival in the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

The importance of pre-Columbian culture to Rivera

Rivera was an avid collector of pre-Columbian art, amassing 50,000 pieces over the course of his life, a large proportion of which are housed today at the  Anahuacalli Museum  in Mexico City.

These had a major influence on his art, the figures in which hark back to the heavily stylised, volumetric figures of Mesoamerican stone carvings. A fine example is 1926’s  Madre con Hijos , where a mother and two children of steadfast gaze have a body-shape that might best be described as monumental.

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Communards (Comuna de Paris) , executed in 1928 . 19⅜ x 15½ in (49.2 x 39.4 cm). Sold for $492,500 on 20-21 November 2018 at Christie’s in New York

Common themes in Rivera’s work

Children are among the most common: both in scenes of everyday life and in portraits. Examples include Niña con rebozo , Portrait of Inesita Martínez , and Niña con muñeca de trapo . ‘It was normal for Rivera to paint these tender images of indigenous children that resonated with an American audience,’ Garza says. ‘Many who visited Mexico would bring back home pictures that captured a slice of Mexican culture.’

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Niña con muñeca de trapo , painted in 1939. 32⅛ x 24¾ in (81.6 x 62.9 cm).

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Niña con alcatraces (also known as Alcatraces ), executed circa 1936 . 15⅛ x 11 in (38.4 x 27.9 cm). Sold for $100,000 on 20-21 November 2018 at Christie’s in New York

For Rivera, children — were political. ‘They represented the hope of a new generation in a new Mexico,’ says Garza, ‘the promise of a bright future, marked by equality and social justice. His boys and girls are always captured positively and with dignity.’

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Niño con alcatraces , executed in 1950 . 15⅛ x 11 in (38.4 x 27.9 cm). Sold for $118,750 on 20-21 November 2018 at Christie’s in New York

Diego Rivera (1886-1957), Niña con flores amarillas , executed in 1950 . 15 ¼ x 11 in (38.7 x 27.9 cm). Sold for $106,250 on 20-21 November 2018 at Christie’s in New York

In Portrait of Inesita Martinez , one is struck by the subject’s inquisitive eyes; while the girl in Niña con muñeca de trapo sits on a humble chair, holding a shawl-wrapped doll with all the affection that a mother might embrace her baby.

Workers and labourers feature in a large number of Rivera’s works too, as symbols of the noble toil of ordinary Mexicans who’d formed the backbone of their nation for centuries.

In his murals, whole fields or factories of people might be seen working en masse, while in easel paintings — such as Lavanderas con zopilotes , of two women bending their backs to wash clothes in a river — acts of labour tend to be isolated.

The critical reception for Rivera

Rivera died in 1957, aged 70. For most of his life, he was hailed as a master. A biography, written soon after his death by Bertram D. Wolfe, was titled, entirely earnestly, The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera .

Over time, however, his reputation diminished. His brand of social realism fell out of fashion, as movements such as Abstract Expressionism and Pop art came to the fore. The artist came to be seen as something of a propagandist for Communism during the Cold War years.

Towards the end of the 20th century, his popularity was surpassed by that of his wife Frida Kahlo whose work was re-discovered amidst the backdrop of feminist and cultural theory.

‘Understandably, people associate Rivera with his murals, but there’s a real market for his other work, too’ — Virgilio Garza

‘The decline in Rivera's reputation since his death has been remarkable,’ wrote Marnham. ‘In an extraordinary twist of fate, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century is remembered… as merely the unsatisfactory husband of a feminist icon.’

He did receive a big retrospective (marking the centenary of his birth) in 1986, though, which started at the Detroit Institute of Arts before travelling to Philadelphia, Mexico City, Berlin and the Hayward Gallery in London.

As for the 21st-Century, there are signs that Rivera’s reputation is on the up again: in large part because of the more globalised notion of modernism that has developed (in contrast to the Euro-/US-centric notion of old). ‘I think there’s a proper appreciation nowadays,’ says Garza, ‘that Mexican muralism was the first major art movement born in the Americas.’

In recent years, Rivera’s work has appeared in a number of exhibitions alongside Kahlo’s, as well as one at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) alongside Picasso ’s. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art has also just announced it will stage a Rivera retrospective in 2020.

The market for works by Diego Rivera

Like his reputation in the art world as a whole, Rivera’s prices are on the rise. ‘The record-breaking sale of The Rivals was the clearest example of that,’ says Garza, ‘but not the only one’. Four of the top five prices for Rivera works at Christie’s have been achieved since 2015.

‘His Cubist pictures are largely all in public collections,’ Garza adds. ‘What we see at auction are the [post-1920] easel paintings and works on paper, which he produced to supplement his income from mural commissions.

Usually, these are colourful slices of Mexican life featuring, say, peasant children or huge bundles of calla lilies, his favourite flower, which proved popular with contemporary collectors from the United States. Rivera’s small-scale work tends to be more pleasant and less overtly political in subject-matter than his murals.

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Another important factor to bear in mind with Rivera’s market is that, in 1959, the Mexican government declared all his art a ‘historic monument’ — essentially imposing strict restrictions on the ability to export it. A large chunk of his works had already left the country by that point, of course, but it does mean something of a limit on supply.

Is there a way in at lower price points? ‘Absolutely,’ says Garza. ‘I recommend the vibrant watercolours Rivera did on rice paper, many of which are exceptionally beautiful. Cargando alcatraces (Tres mujeres, una sentada) , featuring three women carrying calla lilies for sale, is a fine example. Likewise Niña con flores amarillas and Niño con alcatraces , from our upcoming (November 2018) sales.

‘Works on rice paper can range from as little as $20,000 up to $400,000. Understandably, people associate Rivera with his murals, but there’s a real market for his other work, too, that’s both strong and inclusive.’

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Diego Rivera – Discover the Life and Legacy of Diego Rivera’s Art

Diego Rivera, typically considered the most significant Mexican painter of the 20th century, was a larger-than-life character who spent considerable stretches of his career outside of Mexico, in Europe, and the United States. Diego Rivera was regarded as a crucial figure in the Muralist art movement in Mexico and one of its pioneers. Diego Rivera’s artwork was influenced by a variety of backgrounds, including European contemporary masters and the pre-Columbian history of Mexico. Diego Rivera’s paintings, created in the fresco painting style of Italy, dealt with large issues suitable to the grandeur of his preferred art form: socioeconomic inequity, the interaction between the environment, commerce, and innovation, and Mexico’s heritage and destiny.

Table of Contents

• 1.1 Childhood
• 1.2 Early Training
• 1.3 Mature Period
• 1.4 Later Years and Death
• 2.1 View of Toledo (1912)
• 2.2 Zapatista Landscape – The Guerrilla (1915)
• 2.3 Motherhood – Angelina and the Child (1916)
• 2.4 Creation (1923)
• 2.5 Man, Controller of the Universe (1934)
• 2.6 Portrait of Lupe Marin (1938)
• 2.7 Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park (1947)
• 3.1 Diego Rivera: His World and Ours (2011) by Duncan Tonatiuh
• 3.2 Diego Rivera (2022) by Francisco de la Mora
• 4.1 Who Was Diego Rivera?
• 4.2 When Did Diego Rivera Die?

Diego Rivera’s Biography

Diego Rivera’s murals were his preferred medium, which he appreciated for their huge magnitude and public accessibility – the polar antithesis of what he saw as the elite nature of artworks in museums and galleries.

Diego Rivera is still one of Mexico’s most beloved individuals.

He is acclaimed for both his involvement in the nation’s creative rebirth and re-invigoration of the muralist artform, as well as his enormous personality, more than 50 years after his passing. But where did Diego Rivera die and why? Let’s take a look at Diego Rivera’s biography.

Diego Rivera and his twin brother were born in Guanajuato in 1886. His twin perished when he was two years old, and the family relocated to Mexico City soon afterward. Diego’s creative potential was nurtured by his family, who enrolled him in the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts when he was about 12 years of age.

Under the direction of a predominantly orthodox staff, he mastered conventional painting and sculpture skills.

Gerardo Murillo would become a motivating influence behind the Mexican Muralist Art Movement in the early years of the 20th century, in which Rivera participated, and was one of his classmates at the school.

Early Training

The two students participated in an exhibit hosted by the publishers of Savia Moderna magazine in 1905 with a selection of other up-and-coming painters. Diego Rivera finished his studies in 1905 and more than 20 of Diego Rivera’s paintings were put on exhibit at the annual San Carlos Academy art display the following year. La Era (1904) is one of his paintings from this period that demonstrates Impressionism in the interplay of light and shadow, as well as the artist’s characteristic use of color. Rivera obtained government funding to study in Europe in 1907.

Rivera studied the art of Diego Velázquez, El Greco, Francisco Goya , and the Flemish painters in the Prado Museum in Spain, which served as a firm framework for his later work.

Rivera met the prominent exponents of the Madrid avant-garde, notably Ramon Valle-Inclan and Ramon Gomez de la Serna, at the workshop of Spanish realism painter Eduardo Chicharro. Rivera and Valle-Inclan flew to Belgium and Paris in 1909, where he encountered Russian artist Angelina Beloff, who would become Rivera’s companion for the next 12 years.

Rivera then held his debut exhibit at the San Carlos Academy when he returned to Mexico City in 1910. Rivera’s homecoming was timed to correspond with the start of the Mexican Revolution, which would endure until 1917. Notwithstanding the political turmoil, Rivera’s exhibition was a huge hit, and the proceeds from the purchase of his paintings allowed him to return to Europe.

Rivera returned to Paris and became a devout follower of Cubism, which he saw as a really revolutionary style of art.

Rivera’s turbulent partnerships with the other participants of the movement came to a head following a violent altercation with Pierre Reverdy the art critic. This ultimately culminated in a permanent split with the group and the end of his friendships and relationships with Braque, Picasso, Juan Gris, Gino Severini, Fernand Leger, and Jacques Lipchitz. Rivera then turned his attention to Cézanne and Neoclassical painters like Ingres, as well as a resurgence of representational art .

Rivera received another scholarship to pursue artistry in Italy, where he replicated Byzantine, Etruscan, and Renaissance artworks , with a special focus on the murals of the 14th and 15th centuries of the Italian Renaissance.

Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 after Jose Vasconcelos was appointed as the new Minister of Education in Mexico, leaving behind his companion.

Mature Period

Rivera arrived in Mexico with a rekindled aesthetic vision, shaped by his studies of Classical and antique artwork. Under the guidance of the Ministry of Education’s program curriculum, he was given the chance to travel and study various pre-Columbian ancient sites. The first of Diego Rivera’s murals, Creation (1922), was created for the National Preparatory School and exhibits a considerable presence of Western art.

Rivera was active in local politics immediately after joining the Mexican Communist Party in 1922. He was painting frescoes in Mexico City’s National School of Agriculture at the time.

During the latter project, he became engaged with Tina Modotti, an Italian photographer who had posed for his paintings; the romance caused him to divorce Lupe Marin, his wife at the time. Rivera traveled to the Soviet Union in 1927 to attend the 10th-anniversary festivities of the October Revolution, which he found tremendously inspirational. He taught monumental art at the School of Fine Arts in Moscow for nine months. He wedded the artist Frida Kahlo , who was 21 years younger than him, and was appointed the head of the Academy of San Carlos upon his return to Mexico.

His radical educational views made him opponents among the conservative student and faculty body, and he was ousted from the Communist Party for cooperating with the state at the same time. Rivera gained backing from Dwight W. Morrow, who hired him to create a fresco in Cuernavaca’s Cortes Palace commemorating the city’s history.

Morrow, a long-time fan of Diego Rivera’s artwork, offered the artist a trip to the United States with all costs covered. Rivera stayed in the United States for four years.

There, the prolific artist painted murals around the clock in New York, San Francisco, and Detroit, honoring the tremendous powers of labor, industry, education, and art. He was a huge hit in New York, but he also sparked a lot of debate. Rivera’s American journey came to an end in 1933, when John D. Rockefeller, Jr. ordered the removal of the mural Man at the Crossroads , which he had originally created for the lobby of Rockefeller Center, due to Rivera’s refusal to remove the picture of Lenin and what the Rockefellers considered an inflammatory depiction of David Rockefeller.

Later Years and Death

Rivera and Kahlo had a house studio in a lovely Bauhaus-style structure in Mexico City that may still be visited today when Rivera came to Mexico. Rivera painted in the National Palace on and off from 1929 to 1945, producing some of his most iconic muralist artworks there. He and Kahlo assisted Leon Trotsky and his wife in obtaining political asylum in 1937; the Trotskys resided with them in the Coyoacan area for two years.

Rivera and Kahlo separated a couple of years later, but they rejoined in San Francisco the following year, while Diego Rivera was working on the Golden Gate International Exposition.

The two had a ferociously intense and tumultuous relationship, as seen by her very intimate artworks. The pair remained together until Kahlo died in 1954. Diego Rivera continued to create murals in his later years, often on moveable panels. He also painted a lot of oil portraits, mostly of the Mexican bourgeoisie, children, and tourists from the United States. These pieces aren’t necessarily noteworthy, and they sometimes have a kitschy look that recalls Pop art .

Nevertheless, they were extremely profitable throughout his lifetime, allowing the artist to add to his impressive collection of pre-Columbian artifacts . His artwork is now kept at the Anahuacalli Museum, a structure inspired by Tenochtitlan’s Great Temple and constructed by Rivera himself. Rivera remarried in 1955 to Emma Hurtado, his dealer since 1946, despite being widowed and suffering from cancer.

Rivera died in Mexico in 1957 at the age of 70, following a voyage to the Soviet Union in the hopes of treating his disease. His request that his ashes be interred beside those of Kahlo’s was denied, and he was laid at Mexico’s “Rotunda of Famous Men”.

Rivera considered the artist as an artisan at the disposal of the people, who needed to use a visual language that was simple to understand. This notion had a significant impact on American public art, inspiring projects such as the Federal Art Project of the Works, in which artists painted images from everyday life in America on government facilities.

Rivera influenced painters as varied as Thomas Hart Benton, Ben Shahn, and Jackson Pollock with his socially and politically wide aesthetic vision, storytelling focus, and utilization of symbolism.

Diego Rivera’s Paintings

Rivera created an incredible oeuvre using the facade of academic institutions and other municipal areas throughout the United States and Mexico as his canvas, reviving curiosity in muralist art and helping to recreate the idea of public art in America by laying the groundwork for the Federal Art Program of the 1930s. The principal topics and influences on Diego Rivera’s artworks were Mexican history and culture.

Rivera, who acquired a great collection of pre-Columbian artifacts, painted panoramic depictions of Mexican history and daily life in a manner heavily influenced by pre-Columbian civilization, from its Mayan roots through the Mexican Revolution and post-Revolutionary present.

Rivera, a longtime Marxist who was a member of the Mexican Communist Party and had close relations with the Soviet Union, is a model of a socially conscious artist. Diego Rivera’s paintings depicted the Mexican farmers, American laborers, and revolutionary icons like Emiliano Zapata and Vladimir Lenin, expressing his unabashed support for left-wing political issues. His forthright, uncompromising communist ideas occasionally clashed with affluent benefactors’ preferences, causing enormous controversy both inside and beyond the art world.

View of Toledo (1912)

Primarily, the material is based on a masterpiece by Greek painter El Greco of the same name. Rivera meticulously examined his work and admired the expressive style in which he worked at the time. El Greco’s View of Toledo was painted in 1599, but it remains curiously current even after all these years. Both compositions include a cityscape from a distant vantage point, and the painters chose spots on the city’s outskirts that are very similar.

El Greco’s rendition would thrill us with a chaotic sky scene, but Rivera’s version is a little quieter, with a river running around the bottom of the picture, providing a counterpoint to the sky at the top.

He also does both in a very flat blue tone, which adds to the general relaxing feeling of the work. The positivism continues in the Mexican rendition, with the rooftops and walls of each structure brightened significantly, possibly indicating the common style utilized in this region of the world. Toledo is a beautiful city with a lovely setting that is complemented by old and appealing architecture.

El Greco was born in Greece but spent much of his life in Spain, which illustrates why so many of his most famous works are currently housed in Madrid’s Prado Museum. Rivera virtually provided us with the same area the morning after, once the clouds had lifted and the sun shined through, while his rendition was immersed in the El Greco style of dramatic, dark, and somber colors.

In a symbolic gesture, the cathedral at the top rises out to the sky, looking down on the structures on the lower levels of the town. The artist sits on a bank in the foreground and informs us of this with some blooms in the foreground.

Rivera also employs a casual attitude to detail that differs from that of earlier century Realism artists, and his palette retains a link to Cezanne’s works, with pink, orange, and yellow tones.

Zapatista Landscape – The Guerrilla (1915)

In 1915, Diego Rivera completed his masterwork. He praised the artwork as an accurate portrayal of the Mexican attitude at the time. A hat, a serape, a cartridge strap, a firearm, Mexico’s highlands, and a wooden ammo box are depicted in the Zapatista artwork. The central item drifts as its planes intersect in interesting ways. The gun’s shadow is white, the reds in the picture have a particular tone, and the blues are gorgeously rendered, just like they are in Mexico.

The audience is then asked to determine the face in the piece by this “all-seeing” eye. This artwork is as secretive as a Zapatista.

There are highly crowded green clusters of woods on the left and right sides of the artwork. Over the darkness, the trees are painted in a dark viridian green. A blank piece of paper is fastened to the blue background with a nail in the lower-right corner. The trompe-l’oeil technique is used to paint the piece of paper. This bit of paper is a declaration from Mexico that stretches back thousands of years.

Rivera’s cubists produced other beautiful art pieces after he finished the Zapatista, but he never created any artwork as good as the Zapatista. He demonstrated that he was one of the most effective cubist artists with this picture.

Because of his popularity, Rivera became a major figure in theoretical disputes in wartime Paris. Rivera depicted the Zapatistas in Paris during the Mexican revolution’s brutal fight. Although the picture was not well-known at the time, it was given a new interpretation a decade later. Emiliano Zapata, a well-known guerrilla army peasant, and his supporters are the subject of the artwork’s title. Given that the title was added later, it’s difficult to establish if Rivera was thinking about Zapata in 1915.

Motherhood – Angelina and the Child (1916)

The Madonna and Child is a constant art history topic, and Motherhood is a modernized, Cubist interpretation of it. Angelina Beloff, Rivera’s 12-year common-law wife, embraces their infant son who succumbed to influenza just weeks after his birth.

Rivera’s distinctive attitude to Cubism, eschewed the gloomy, monochrome palette utilized by painters like Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque in favor of vibrant hues evocative of those used by Italian Futurist painters like Giacomo Balla and Gino Severini, is brilliantly illustrated in this work.

Creation (1923)

The muralist artwork is a massive work that spans over a thousand square feet. Diego Rivera’s artwork was the first to be ordered by the government. Between 1922 and 1923, Rivera created this picture. The drawing’s main topic was a strong emphasis on faith, as well as its beliefs. The painting is done with antique techniques, including molten wax, which is used to apply the colors. The drawing comprises a large pipe that is hidden within the frame, as well as different designs that represent something.

The human figures on each side of the deep-colored framework, which evokes an altar, are the drawing’s key highlights.

The depiction of the sun is at the highest position above all the details. The Divine Trinity is symbolized by three hands pointing away from the sun in separate directions. All of the hands appear to be pointing down at the sketched human features. Another artwork behind the altar depicts a man stretching out his hands as if attempting to reach out to all the others. The depiction of a person with completely spread-out hands is right beneath the sun. 

Eve and Adam are seated on opposing sides of the altar at the bottom of the image. Eve and Adam are human beings who are said to be the first humans by Christians. They are nude, contrasting the rest of the group, to reflect the Christian idea of rebellion. The nine distinct pictures on both sides of the altar are all indicative of various Christian qualities and virtues as believed in religious beliefs. They signify love, optimism, and belief, starting from the left.

Individuals on the right signify wisdom, fairness, and the belief in one’s own power.

The picture and its symbolism are solely religious and have no political overtones. The illustration also represents the living values that are taught in the Christian faith. The artist was dissatisfied with this painting since it exhibited a lot of Italian techniques.

Man, Controller of the Universe (1934)

The picture depicts the human species “at the crossroads” of reinforcing or opposing forces and ideologies: science, industry, Communism, and capitalism, as its title suggests. The painting depicts a heroic worker encircled by four propeller-like razors in the middle, disclosing Rivera’s commitment to Communism.

It stands in contrast to a ridiculing depiction of society women with a compassionate depiction of Lenin encircled by communists of various races on the right. The Mexican state ordered this artwork, which is a smaller but almost identical replica of the Rockefeller mural, Man at the Crossroads, for the Rockefeller Center.

A year before this piece, the New York City artwork was demolished due to criticism about Rivera’s picture of Lenin and his following unwillingness to erase the image.

Portrait of Lupe Marin (1938)

Diego Rivera’s political and social life was as vibrant as his work career as he became a well-known worldwide artist. Diego Rivera, like many other young academics in the 1920s, was a Marxist idealist, thus it was only natural that he chose companions who shared his ideals. Diego Rivera publicly joined the Mexican Communist Party towards the end of 1922, after the Russian Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 had transformed Marxism into Communism.

His first spouse, whom he wedded in 1923, was a Communist who he met through another young Communist female acquaintance.

Lupe Marin shared more than just his political ideals with Diego. She was an unusual beauty brimming with irrational emotions. Unfortunately, her ferocious envy of Diego Rivera was too much for his passionate nature to handle. When Diego Rivera paid the smallest attention to other ladies, she tore up his sketches in a fit of wrath on several occasions. Diego Rivera, without a doubt, inflamed Lupe for his own fun at the start. She crushed up a valued statue and served it to him in his soup, even though she was jealous of his enthusiasm for Pre-Columbian sculpture.

Rivera demonstrates his significant creative debt to the European painting heritage in this stunning picture of Lupe Marin, from whom he had been estranged for the preceding decade.

Rivera presents his figure partially in reflection by using a mirror in the backdrop, a technique used by artists like Claude Monet , Diego Velázquez, and Paul Gauguin, which he would later utilize in his 1949 portrait of his daughter Ruth. The model’s expressive hands and the painting’s coloring recall another creative hero, El Greco, while the structure and composition recall Paul Cézanne’s work.

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park (1947)

Could it be that the artist, a big man who called himself “the toad” and defined himself as “ugly,” disliked looking at himself? Diego Rivera’s self-portraits always include bulging eyes and a somewhat sarcastic smirk. The painter’s self-effacement is visible even in a seemingly harmless insertion of a Diego Rivera self-portrait, such as the one surreptitiously incorporated in this vast fresco.

Diego Rivera is shown as a child, with his wife Frida standing behind him as an adult, alluding to Rivera’s inexperience in their relationship.

Compare this to Frida’s love portrait of their union on a 1931 canvas. Hundreds of figures from Mexico’s 400-year history congregate in Mexico City’s largest park for a promenade. The dream’s darker side is revealed by the colorful balloons, immaculately dressed guests, and diversified wares vendors: a conflict between an indigenous household and a law enforcement officer; a man firing a gun into the face of someone being crushed by a horse in the middle of a brawl; and a nefarious skeleton grinning at the spectator.

This is a complicated dream in the style of Surrealism. Dreams were the primary subject matter for Surrealists such as Salvador Dalí. Because dreams are so intimate and unique, artists were able to juxtapose seemingly unconnected objects, such as clocks and ants in Dalí’s case.

Despite the fact that Rivera never formally joined the Surrealists, he employs this method in this piece, in which he cobbles together a tableau made up of various historical figures.

Recommended Reading

Today we took a look at Diego Rivera’s biography as well as some prime examples of Diego Rivera’s artworks. If you would like to discover even more about Diego Rivera’s paintings and lifetime, then why don’t you check out our list of recommended books. These will assist you in finding out as much as you want about this famous Mexican artist.

Diego Rivera: His World and Ours (2011) by Duncan Tonatiuh

Duncan Tonatiuh, an award-winning novelist and artist who has been fascinated by the culture and art of his home Mexico, wonders what history Diego Rivera might tell via his paintings if he were still painting today. What kind of narratives would he be able to bring to life? Tonatiuh helps younger audiences comprehend the value of Diego Rivera’s paintings and understand that they, too, can tell stories via art by taking inspiration from the artist.

• Helps young readers understand the importance of Rivera’s art
• Discover the life and legacy of the celebrated Mexican artist
• A Pura Belpré Illustrator Award winner

Diego Rivera (2022) by Francisco de la Mora

The unusual lives and times of an artist for whom mythology and reality merged are told in this brilliantly produced graphic novel. In more ways than one, Diego Rivera was a groundbreaking painter. By his thirties, he had established himself as one of the most significant players in the Parisian art scene, having started painting school at the age of eleven. Rivera’s tireless work ethic was matched by his boundless enthusiasm for life, which he demonstrated by amassing scores of lovers and four brides.

• Beautifully realized graphic novel
• Tells the story of the extraordinary life and times of the artist
• Explores the passions and contradictions of Rivera as a cultural figure

Diego Rivera was a worldwide art superstar at the height of his career. He received his training in Mexico City’s Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes and spent several years in Europe, where he rose to prominence in Paris’s thriving global community of avant-garde artists. He created his own form of cubism there, filled with emblems of Mexican national identity. Following his return to Mexico in 1922, he joined other creative intellectuals and government leaders in a coordinated attempt to rejuvenate and reinvent Mexican culture in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution, a 10-year battle that claimed the lives of over a million people.

Take a look at our Diego Rivera paintings webstory here!

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was diego rivera.

Rivera was a well-known proponent of Mexican Muralism , a government-sponsored movement intended at praising the country’s history, heritage, and post-Revolutionary principles via large-scale murals in public settings. Rivera produced vast mural cycles that relied on modernist painting approaches to convey heroic views of Mexico’s history and present that grabbed the notice of critics and observers worldwide, employing a centuries-old fresco method. Rivera’s work and ideas were notably well received by artists and viewers in the United States.

When Did Diego Rivera Die?

On the 24th of November, 1957, Diego Rivera died of cardiac failure. He passed away in the morning time in his house in Mexico. He was 70 years old at the time. In the 1940s, Rivera was diagnosed with diabetes. Two years prior, information about his disease had slipped out, and he traveled to Moscow for treatment by Soviet physicians.

Isabella studied at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in English Literature & Language and Psychology. Throughout her undergraduate years, she took Art History as an additional subject and absolutely loved it. Building on from her art history knowledge that began in high school, art has always been a particular area of fascination for her. From learning about artworks previously unknown to her, or sharpening her existing understanding of specific works, the ability to continue learning within this interesting sphere excites her greatly.

Her focal points of interest in art history encompass profiling specific artists and art movements, as it is these areas where she is able to really dig deep into the rich narrative of the art world. Additionally, she particularly enjoys exploring the different artistic styles of the 20 th century, as well as the important impact that female artists have had on the development of art history.

Learn more about Isabella Meyer and the Art in Context Team .

Cite this Article

Isabella, Meyer, “Diego Rivera – Discover the Life and Legacy of Diego Rivera’s Art.” Art in Context. June 28, 2022. URL: https://artincontext.org/diego-rivera/

Meyer, I. (2022, 28 June). Diego Rivera – Discover the Life and Legacy of Diego Rivera’s Art. Art in Context. https://artincontext.org/diego-rivera/

Meyer, Isabella. “Diego Rivera – Discover the Life and Legacy of Diego Rivera’s Art.” Art in Context , June 28, 2022. https://artincontext.org/diego-rivera/ .

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The Most Famous Artists and Artworks

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors…in all of history! 

MOST FAMOUS ARTISTS AND ARTWORKS

Discover the most famous artists, paintings, sculptors!

Visiting Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion? You must join the virtual exhibition queue when you arrive. If capacity has been reached for the day, the queue will close early.

Diego rivera, guanajuato, mexico, 1886‒mexico city, 1957.

Among the most important artists of post-revolutionary Mexico, Diego Rivera possessed a modernist vision that was inseparable from his tireless advocacy of Indigenous art. The visual language of Rivera’s paintings and murals, replete with Mesoamerican imagery, was developed in and through his collection of nearly sixty thousand pre-Columbian artifacts that the artist assembled between 1910 and his death in 1957.

Born to a wealthy family in central Mexico, Rivera began his formal training as a painter at the age of ten, studying at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. In 1907, he traveled to Europe, studying briefly in Madrid before settling in Paris, where he befriended a group of international artists as associated with the School of Paris. In 1920‒21, Rivera traveled to Italy to study frescoes. The monumental schemes of Renaissance wall painting had a formative impact upon his conception of public art when he returned to Mexico in 1921. As artists and politicians grappled with how to memorialize the ten-year Mexican Revolution (1910‒20) and how to visualize ensuing social change and reform, Rivera’s socialist-inflected, large-scale mural programs used images of Mexico’s pre-colonial past to express the nationalist identity of the future.

As he rose to prominence with highly visible mural commissions in Mexico and the United States, Rivera promoted the popular art and culture of Mexico as a contributor to and editor of the English-language journal Mexican Folkways , published by Frances Toor between 1925 and 1937. He traveled to Moscow in 1927 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. Rivera remained in the Soviet Union until the following year, when he was expelled for participating in anti-Soviet political activity; the Communist Party subsequently revoked his membership. Before he left Moscow, Rivera met Alfred H. Barr Jr., who championed the artist’s work in a major exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1931) and helped him to secure additional commissions in the United States.

In 1929, Rivera married the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo. After traveling throughout the United States between 1930 and 1934, Kahlo and Rivera returned to their homes in Coyoacán, on the outskirts of Mexico City. For the next decade, they lived between Kahlo’s family home, La Casa Azul, and their home and adjoining studio built in 1931–32 by the Mexican architect and painter Juan O’Gorman. In 1945 Rivera began to design a museum to house his collection: a basalt stone structure, built on a lava bed, that resembles a pre-Columbian pyramid. Rivera created large-scale mosaics with mythological themes to adorn the roof, and integrated elements of the landscape within its open-air design. Within the interior, Rivera created an intricate display program with the assistance of the anthropologist Alfonso Caso, choosing two thousand works to exhibit. In his memoirs, Rivera lamented that the project depleted his financial resources and remained unfinished. After his death, the construction of the Museo Diego Rivera Anahuacalli was completed by architects O’Gorman and Heriberto Pagelson.

Diego Rivera, coleccionista . Exh. cat. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, 2007.

Rivera, Diego. My Art, My Life: An Autobiography. Translated by Gladys March.New York: Courier Corporation, 2012.

How to cite this entry: O'Hanlan, Sean, "Diego Rivera," The Modern Art Index Project (August 2021), Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.  https://doi.org/10.57011/QRTP6672

Diego Rivera: Renowned Artist Who Courted Controversy

 FPG / Getty Images

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• Ph.D., Spanish, Ohio State University
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Diego Rivera was a talented Mexican painter associated with the muralist movement. A Communist, he was often criticized for creating paintings that were controversial. Along with Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siquieros, he is considered one of the “big three” most important Mexican muralists. Today he is remembered as much for his volatile marriage to fellow artist Frida Kahlo as he is for his art.

Early Years

Diego Rivera was born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico. A naturally gifted artist, he began his formal art training at a young age, but it wasn’t until he went to Europe in 1907 that his talent truly began to blossom.

Europe, 1907-1921

During his stay in Europe, Rivera was exposed to cutting-edge avant-garde art. In Paris, he had a front-row seat to the development of the cubist movement, and in 1914 he met Pablo Picasso , who expressed admiration for the young Mexican’s work. He left Paris when  World War I  broke out and went to Spain, where he helped introduce cubism in Madrid. He traveled around Europe until 1921, visiting many regions, including southern France and Italy, and was influenced by the works of Cezanne and Renoir.

Return to Mexico

When he returned home to Mexico, Rivera soon found work for the new revolutionary government. Secretary of Public Education Jose Vasconcelos believed in education through public art, and he commissioned several murals on government buildings by Rivera, as well as fellow painters Siquieros and Orozco. The beauty and artistic depth of the paintings gained Rivera and his fellow muralists international acclaim.

International Work

Rivera’s fame earned him commissions to paint in other countries besides Mexico. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1927 as part of a delegation of Mexican Communists. He painted murals at the California School of Fine Arts, the American Stock Exchange Luncheon Club and the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and another was commissioned for Rockefeller Center in New York. However, it was never completed because of a controversy over Rivera’s inclusion of the image of Vladimir Lenin in the work. Although his stay in the United States was short, he is considered a major influence on American art.

Political Activism

Rivera returned to Mexico, where he resumed the life of a politically active artist. He was instrumental in the defection of Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Union to Mexico; Trotsky even lived with Rivera and Kahlo for a time. He continued to court controversy; one of his murals, at the Hotel del Prado, contained the phrase “God does not exist” and was hidden from view for years. Another, this one at the Palace of Fine Arts, was removed because it included images of Stalin and Mao Tse-tung.

Marriage to Kahlo

Rivera met Kahlo , a promising art student, in 1928; they married the next year. The mixture of the fiery Kahlo and the dramatic Rivera would prove to be a volatile one. They each had numerous extramarital affairs and fought often. Rivera even had a fling with Kahlo's sister Cristina. Rivera and Kahlo divorced in 1940 but remarried later the same year.

10 Facts About Diego Rivera

The founder of the mexican mural movement left his mark across the americas.

By Google Arts & Culture

Diego Rivera and his daughter Guadalupe Rivera Marín (1927) by Unknown Museo Frida Kahlo

1. An early muralist

It's said he started his career young, at the age of three, a year after his twin brother died. His parents once caught him drawing on the house, and so installed chalkboards and canvas on the walls to encourage his artistic inclement.

Avila Morning [The Ambles Valley] (1908) by Diego Rivera Museo Nacional de Arte

2. Avant-garde and Old Masters

From the age of ten, Rivera studied art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. In 1907, at 21, he travelled to Europe, continuing his studies in Madrid and Paris, where he took up the new Cubist style of painting with great enthusiasm.

The Grinder (1924) by Diego Rivera Museo Nacional de Arte

3. Renaissance and revolution

His interest in murals was sparked by a trip to Italy in 1920, where he studied Renaissance frescoes. He soon returned to Mexico, and became involved in the official government mural programme dedicated to the 1910 Revolution, as well as joining the Mexican Communist Party.

Zapata-style Landscape (1915) by Diego Rivera Museo Nacional de Arte

4. Folk Art and Folk Tales

His style of large, flattened surfaces and simple colours developed from his study of Mexican folk art and pre-hispanic cultures. Like the monuments of the Maya, Rivera sought to tell stories and set examples through his public art.

Frida and Diego with their pet monkey "Caimito del Guayabal" (1943) by Autor no identificado Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo

5. Five Wives

Rivera had numerous marriages, affairs, and children. His first child and only son died at the age of two. His fourth wife was fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo , with whom he had a volatile relationship that continued until her death. In 1955 he married his former agent.

Diego Rivera with a xoloitzcuintle dog in the Blue House, Coyoacan by Unknown Museo Frida Kahlo

6. Man's best friend

Rivera and Kahlo were very fond of dogs. They kept a number of hairless Mexican Xoloitzcuintle dogs at their house. Rivera's large murals depicting the history of Mexico in the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City feature numerous Xolos.

Arriving of Leon Trotsky and his wife, Natalia Sedova (1937/1937) by Mayo Brothers Archivo General de la Nación - México

7. He hosted Trotsky in exile

Rivera was a dedicated Marxist and joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1922, but was expelled as a subversive in 1929. When the former Soviet leader Trotsky was forced into exile, Rivera and Kahlo petitioned the Mexican government to be allowed to host him as their guest.

8. Diego Rivera Theater, California, USA

In 1929 American journalist Ernestine Evans published a book on Rivera's murals. This led to many more commissions. In 1930 he completed a fresco for the California School of Fine Art, later relocated to what is now the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute

Photograph of Diego and Frida taken by their friend Lucienne when the last panel of the fresco at the New Workers School in New York was finished (3 de diciembre de 1933) by Lucienne Bloch Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo

9. Politics and patrons don't mix

In 1933 a mural was commissioned for the lobby of the Rockefeller Center. Rivera painted an enormous dedication to Marxism-Leninism, which perhaps unsurprisingly didn't sit well with J.D. Rockefeller Jr. The mural was taken down, but Rivera remade it in Mexico City.

10. Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan, USA

Between 1932-33 Rivera painted the Detroit Industry Murals, consisting of 27 panels depicting industry at the Ford Motor Company and Detroit. He considered these his greatest achievement. Together they surround the interior Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Want to read more? Discover 10 facts about Frida Kahlo

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The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican.

- Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, his Life and Art

Diego Rivera, a memorable figure in 20th-century art, actively painted during the 50 years from 1907 to 1957. Mexican by birth, Rivera spent a good portion of his adult life in Europe and the United States as well as in his home in Mexico City. Early in his career, he dabbled in Cubism and later embraced Post-Impressionism, but his unique style and perspective are immediately recognizable as his own. He was involved in the world of politics as a dedicated Marxist and joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1922. He hosted Russian exile Leon Trotsky and his wife at his home in Mexico City in the 1930s. Lived in unsettled times and led a turbulent life, Diego Rivera, widely known for his Marxist leanings, along with Marxism Revolutionary Che Guevara and a small band of contemporary figures, has become a countercultural symbol of 20th century and created a legacy in the art that continues to inspire the imagination and mind.

Diego Rivera's Early Years: 1886-1915

The artist and his twin brother were born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico. His twin died at the age of two, and the family moved to Mexico City shortly thereafter. His parents encouraged Diego's artistic talent, enrolling him in the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts when he was approximately 12 years old. There, he studied traditional painting and sculpting techniques under the tutelage of a largely conservative faculty. Gerardo Murillo was among his fellow students at the academy, an artist who would become a driving force behind the Mexican Mural Movement in the early 20th century, in which Rivera took part. In 1905, the two students joined a group of other up-and-coming artists in an exhibition organized by the editors of Savia Moderna magazine.

Rivera completed his studies in 1905, and the following year, he exhibited more than two dozen paintings at the annual San Carlos Academy art show. One of his works from this time, "La Era," or "The Threshing," displays elements of Impressionism in the play of light and shadow and the artist's distinctive use of color.

In 1907, Rivera received a government sponsorship to study in Europe. The artist's first stop was Madrid, where he studied with Realist painter Eduardo Chicharro Aguera at the San Fernando Royal Academy. There, Rivera created paintings like "Night Scene in Avila," a work containing elements of Realism and Impressionism. At Madrid's Prada Museum, he familiarized himself with the paintings of such Spanish masters as El Greco , Francisco Goya and Diego Velazquez , all of whom would influence his artistic development.

From Madrid, he moved to Paris where he lived off and on for several years among other émigré avant-garde artists, including Piet Mondrian , Modigliani and Neo-Impressionist Georges Seurat . Rivera showed six paintings in the 1910 exhibit sponsored by The Société des Artistes Indépendants in Paris, including the realistic portrait, "Head of a Breton Woman." Other works the artists completed during this time, including "Breton Girl" and "House Over the Bridge," evidence an Impressionistic focus on the transformative power of light. However, when Rivera returned to Paris after a brief visit to Mexico, his style underwent a significant shift toward Cubism, which was enjoying its heyday in Europe during the second decade of the 20th century. The Cubists sought to portray multiple dimensions of a single subject through the use of geometric forms or intersecting planes. Under the influence of Pablo Picasso and the recently deceased Paul Cezanne , Rivera's paintings became progressively more abstract. View of Toledo from 1912 contains both recognizable buildings and Cubist elements in the landscape while "Portrait of Oscar Miestchaninoff" from the following year clearly illustrates the Cubist influence on Rivera's style.

By 1913, the artists had fully embraced Cubism in his art, as evidenced by such works as "Woman at a Well" and Sailor at Breakfast . He submitted works to the Salon d'Automne exhibit where the likes of Picasso, Marcel Duchamp and Andre Lhote had shown their work over the previous years, attracting both negative reactions and the positive attention of the art community.

Diego Rivera's Middle Years: 1916-1928

Motherhood: Angelina and the Child from 1916 is among Rivera's last purely Cubist paintings. His artistic development headed in a fresh direction as the artist focused on recent political events such as the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917, bringing his ideological views to the forefront. His paintings began to portray the working class combined with elements of his Mexican heritage. A trip through Italy in 1920 had piqued the artist's interest in Renaissance frescoes, and when he returned to Mexico the following year, he became involved in mural painting.

Rivera joined a group of artists, including muralist Jose Clemente Orozco and Mexican realist David Alfaro Siqueiros, in a government-sponsored mural program. Rivera's first foray into the genre, Creation , which he painted on a wall in the National Preparatory School auditorium in Mexico City, depicts a heavenly host with Renaissance haloes.

The artist also joined the Mexican Communist Society during that first year of his repatriation. He founded the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors as well. He began a series of frescoes later in 1922 that focused on Mexican society and the country's revolutionary past, entitled "Ballad of the Proletarian Revolution," that he would not complete until 1928. The finished work, consisting of over 120 frescoes covering more than 5,200 square feet, is installed in Mexico City's Secretariat of Public Education building.

By now the artist was well into his 30s, and the Diego Rivera painting style had come into its own, featuring large figures with simplified lines and rich colors. Many of his scenes tell the stories of workers such as miners, farmers, industrial laborers, and peasants. His paintings of Flower Carrier and Flower Vendor are among his best known. Some frescos show festivals, such as "The Day of the Dead" and "The Maize Festival" from 1924. At this time, Rivera began work on a mural for the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo, Mexico, which he entitled, "The Liberated Earth with Natural Forces Controlled by Man."

When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the masters - Michelangelo , Cézanne , and Renoir . The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican... ” -By Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera's Later Years: 1927-1957

The artist took part in a delegation to the Soviet Union in 1927 to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of the October Revolution. While in Moscow, Rivera met Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would become a friend and patron as well as the director of the Museum of Modern Art . Following his return to Mexico City, Rivera divorced his first wife, Lupe Marin, and married fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo . He also began work on a commissioned series of murals for the Palace of Cortez in Cuernavaca.

His fame grew in North America as "The Frescoes of Diego Rivera" came out in New York City. American architect Timothy Pflueger brought the artist to San Francisco with the offer of some commissions. Rivera's trip to California coincided with the first major showing of his work in the United States.

Rivera painted three murals in San Francisco from 1930 to 1931. One of these, located in the Pacific Stock Exchange building, is titled "The Allegory of California." This work centers around an oversized female figure representing California and features several workers plying their trades. "The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City" is the title of the mural he painted for the San Francisco School of Fine Arts, which features an open building with several rooms, each filled with people working on various tasks. The artist painted a third mural, Pan American Unity , now located in San Francisco's Diego Rivera Theater. It is an epic undertaking of five frescoes.

In 1932, the artist and his wife headed east where a commission awaited at the Detroit Institute of Arts. There, he produced 27 panels collectively known as the "Detroit Industry Murals," depicting the evolution of the Ford Motor Company. Rivera considered this series, which he completed in 1933 with the help of assistants, to be one of his most successful projects.

His next undertaking would prove to be his most notorious failure. Commissioned to paint a mural for the Rockefeller Center in New York, the artist began work on Man at the Crossroads . A figure stood at the center of the main fresco, and in the various sections surrounding him appeared scenes from science, industry, politics and history. To the right and left of center, giant statues of Jupiter and Caesar loomed. The Rockefellers took exception to the inclusion of Lenin in the mural. When Rivera refused to remove him, they canceled further work and had the mural destroyed. Afterward, the artist would recreate the scene on a smaller scale in the Palace of Fine Arts upon his return to Mexico City, using photographs of the mural as a guide.

He traveled once more to San Francisco to paint ten murals for the Golden Gate International Exposition of 1940, and then completed various commissions in his native country over the course of the next few years. In 1949, Rivera enjoyed an anniversary exhibition celebrating 50 years of his work at Mexico City's Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts.

Frida Kahlo died in 1954, and in the following year, Rivera married his third wife, Emma Hurtado. One year later, the entire country of Mexico observed the artist's 70th birthday. Rivera died of heart disease in 1957.

Diego Rivera's Influence on the World of Art

Just like Van Gogh on Impressionism, Diego Rivera's impact on Mexican art is tremendous. Rivera remained a central force in the development of national art in Mexico throughout his life. Perhaps one of his greatest legacies, however, was his impact on America's conception of public art. In depicting scenes of American life on public buildings, Rivera provided the first inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's WPA program. Of the hundreds of American artists who would find work through the WPA, many continued on to address political concerns that had first been publicly presented by Rivera. Both his original painting style and the force of his ideas remain major influences on American painting.

Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park

Man at the crossroads, history of mexico, pan american unity, el vendedora de flores, flower seller, 1942, flower festival, flower carrier, detroit industry murals, frozen assets, portrait of lupe marin, portrait of natasha gelman, symbolic landscape, flower vendor, nude with calla lilies, agrarian leader zapata, jacques lipchitz, indian warrior, crossing the barranca.

• Diego Rivera

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This biography captures the journey of a charismatic Mexican artist who would become integral to the nation's Muralist movement as well as promoting the lives of his poor, native countrymen right across the world. His name was Diego Rivera.

Artist Rivera found a passion for drawing at an early age and would frequently fine tune his skills in this medium as a young child. At that stage, no-one would have predicted the heights to which his artistic talents would later rise. He joined the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City at the age of 10 and was already starting to show promise - he would now start to receive the necessary training required to make the most of his potential. Even at this early stage his own character was starting to show, consistently confident and bold with his claims and also the ambitions that he held for his life to come. That said, no-one could have imagined at that point just quite the level of achievements that he would go on to make, as well as the strength of reputation that he built right across Mexico and the western world.

The Influence of Europe on Diego Rivera

He would travel to Europe in 1907 and from this point onwards his artistic education would develop significantly. His time here was both to learn but also to create a career, both of which worked to a certain degree. The European art scene fully embraced the young Rivera, with his bold character enabling him to build friendships with several famous artists, including Pablo Picasso . He was later quoted discussing the genius of the Spaniard. Additionally he would also study artwork from other great names even if he was unable to meet them in person. These names include Matisse and Gauguin . Others French artists known to have inspired Rivera in various ways include Paul Cézanne , Henri Rousseau and André Breton. Beyond France he would study the Renaissance frescoes of Italy and these introduced him to the concept of large-scale art, such as murals. European art has long since been inspired by styles from other continents and cultures, and Rivera would reverse this direction of influence by taking elements of these inspiring frescoes into his own career. The techniques that he learnt and fostered would provide the basis to his series of murals, though the content would be very much his own selection.

Returning to Mexico

The artist chose to return to Mexico due to political instabilities in other parts of the world. It was an opportunity to reconnect with his roots, and potentially discover new sources of inspiration for his work. He may also view his home country with a slightly different perspective, having travelled around so many other nations during that point in his career. It was at this point that he decided to begin capturing ordinary lives of the working poor within his work. He felt compassion for their struggles and also saw a beauty in their lives that needed capturing, with so many other artists having historically turned their backs on the poor, in favour of more fashionable, sellable themes. He would now combine the history of his native Mexico with the artistic techniques of the Italian frescoes in order to produce some extraordinary highlights that dominate his career oeuvre.

Achieving International Recognition

The artist's latter years, article author.

Tom Gurney in an art history expert. He received a BSc (Hons) degree from Salford University, UK, and has also studied famous artists and art movements for over 20 years. Tom has also published a number of books related to art history and continues to contribute to a number of different art websites. You can read more on Tom Gurney here.

Diego Rivera

1886, Guanajuato, Mexico 1957, Mexico City, Mexico

During the 1920s Diego Rivera helped establish a nationalist painting style in Mexico that reflected the nation's indigenous forms and symbols as well as its renewed political vitality.

Rivera received his formal training in Mexico City, where the seeds of his populist philosophy were planted. In 1907, he was awarded a scholarship to travel and study in Spain, France, and Italy. He returned to his home country some fourteen years later, and quickly became a leader of the muralism movement that flourished after the end of the Mexican Revolution.

Like his colleagues, Rivera painted allegorical depictions of traditional indigenous culture and the dignity of the working class, as well as utopian visions of the future under socialism. Between 1930 and 1940, he painted murals in San Francisco, New York, and Detroit that focused on industry and social progress through technology.

Rivera, a notorious womanizer, was married three times — most famously to the painter Frida Kahlo.

Works in the Collection

• Diego Rivera Cabeza de Ranchero, Silao, Guanajuato (Head of a Rancher, Silao, Guanajuato) 1923
• Diego Rivera Untitled (Mexican Digging) 1936
• Diego Rivera La Mujer Ebria (Drunken Woman) 1926
• Diego Rivera Untitled (Farm Workmen) 1925
• Diego Rivera Paisaje de Tlanepantia (Landscape of Tlanepantia) [formerly Tehuantepec] 1926
• Diego Rivera Untitled (Head of a Man) 1923
• Diego Rivera Hombre surtado durmiendo (Seated Man Asleep) 1921
• Diego Rivera Untitled (Mother and Child) 1936
• Diego Rivera Mujer mexicana con canasta (Mexican Woman with Basket) 1935

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• World Biography

Diego Rivera Biography

Born: December 8, 1886 Guanajuato, Mexico Died: November 25, 1957 Mexico City, Mexico Mexican painter

Diego Rivera was one of Mexico's most famous painters. He rebelled against the traditional school of painting and developed a style that combined historical, social, and political ideas. His great body of work reflects cultural changes taking place in Mexico and around the world during the turbulent twentieth century.

The young artist

Diego Maria Rivera and his twin brother Carlos were born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato State, Mexico, on December 8, 1886. Less than two years later his twin died. Diego's parents were Diego Rivera and Maria Barrientos de Rivera. His father worked as a teacher, an editor for a newspaper, and a health inspector. His mother was a doctor. Diego began drawing when he was only three years old. His father soon built him a studio with canvas-covered walls and art supplies to keep the young artist from drawing on the walls and furniture in the house. As a child, Rivera was interested in trains and machines and was nicknamed "the engineer." The Rivera family moved to Mexico City, Mexico, in 1892.

In 1897 Diego began studying painting at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. His instructors included Andrés Ríos Félix Para (1845–1919), Santiago Rebull (1829–1902), and José María Velasco (1840–1912). Para showed Rivera Mexican art that was different from the European art that he was used to. Rebull taught him that a good drawing was the basis of a good painting. Velasco taught Rivera how to produce three-dimensional effects. He was also influenced by the work of José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), who produced scenes of everyday Mexican life engraved on metal.

In 1902 Rivera was expelled from the academy for leading a student protest when Porfirio Díaz (1830–1915) was reelected president of Mexico. Under Díaz's leadership, those who disagreed with government policies faced harassment, imprisonment, and even death. Many of Mexico's citizens lived in poverty, and there were no laws to protect the rights of workers. After Rivera was expelled, he traveled throughout Mexico painting and drawing.

Art in Europe

Although Rivera continued to work on his art in Mexico, he dreamed of studying in Europe. Finally, Teodora A. Dehesa, the governor of Veracruz, Mexico, who was known for funding artists, heard about Rivera's talent and agreed to pay for his studies in Europe. In 1907 Rivera went to Madrid, Spain, and worked in the studio of Eduardo Chicharro. Then in 1909 he moved to Paris, France. In Paris he was influenced by impressionist painters, particularly Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919). Later he worked in a postimpressionist style inspired by Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), Paul Gauguin (1848–1903), Georges Seurat (1859–1891), Henri Matisse (1869–1954), Raoul Dufy (1877–1953), and Amedeo Modigliani (1884–1920).

As Rivera continued his travels in Europe, he experimented more with his techniques and styles of painting. The series of works he produced between 1913 and 1917 are cubist (a type of abstract art usually based on shapes or objects rather than pictures or scenes) in style. Some of the pieces have Mexican themes, such as the Guerrillero (1915). By 1918 he was producing pencil sketches of the highest quality, an example of which is his self-portrait. He continued his studies in Europe, traveling throughout Italy learning techniques of fresco (in which paint is applied to wet plaster) and mural painting before returning to Mexico in 1921.

Murals and frescoes

Rivera believed that all people (not just people who could buy art or go to museums) should be able to view the art that he was creating. He began painting large murals on walls in public buildings. Rivera's first mural, the Creation (1922), in the Bolívar Amphitheater at the University of Mexico, was the first important mural of the twentieth century. The mural was painted using the encaustic method (a process where a color mixed with other materials is heated after it is applied). Rivera had a great sense of color and an enormous talent for structuring his works. In his later works he used historical, social, and political themes to show the history and the life of the Mexican people.

Between 1923 and 1926 Rivera created frescoes in the Ministry of Education Building in Mexico City. The frescoes in the Auditorium of the National School of Agriculture in Chapingo (1927) are considered his masterpiece. The oneness of the work and the quality of each of the different parts, particularly the feminine nudes, show off the height of his creative power. The general theme of the frescoes is human biological and social development. The murals in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca (1929-1930) depict the fight against the Spanish conquerors.

Marriage, art, and controversy in the United States

In 1929 Rivera married the artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954). The couple traveled in the United States, where Rivera produced many works of art, between 1930 and 1933. In San Francisco he painted murals for the Stock Exchange Luncheon Club and the California School of Fine Arts. Two years later he had an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. One of his most important works is the fresco in the Detroit Institute of Arts (1933), which depicts industrial life in the United States. Rivera returned to New York and began painting a mural for Rockefeller Center (1933). He was forced to stop work on the mural because it included a picture of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), the founder of the Russian Communist Party and the first leader of the Soviet Union. Many people in the United States disagreed with communism (a political and economic system in which property and goods are owned by the government and are supposed to be given to people based on their need) and Lenin and the mural was later destroyed. Rivera was a member of the Mexican Communist Party and many of his works included representations of his political beliefs. In New York Rivera also did a series of frescoes on movable panels depicting a portrait of America for the Independent Labor Institute before returning to Mexico in 1933.

Back to Mexico

After Rivera and Kahlo returned to Mexico, he painted a mural for the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City (1934). This was a copy of the project that he had started in Rockefeller Center. In 1935 Rivera completed frescoes, which he had left unfinished in 1930, on the stairway in the National Palace. The frescoes show the history of Mexico from pre-Columbian times to the present and end with an image representing Karl Marx (1818–1883), the German philosopher and economist whose ideas became known as Marxism. These frescoes show Rivera's political beliefs and his support of Marxism. The four movable panels he worked on for the Hotel Reforma (1936) were removed from the building because they depicted a representation of his views against Mexican political figures. During this period he painted portraits of Lupe Marín and Ruth Rivera and two easel paintings, Dancing Girl in Repose and the Dance of the Earth.

In 1940 Rivera returned to San Francisco to paint a mural for a junior college on the general theme of culture in the future. Rivera believed that the culture of the future would be a combination of the artistic genius of South America and the industrial genius of North America. His two murals in the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico City (1944) show the development of cardiology (the study of the heart) and include portraits of the outstanding physicians in that field. In 1947 he painted a mural for the Hotel del Prado, A Dream in the Alameda.

A celebration of fifty years of art

In 1951 an exhibition honoring fifty years of Rivera's art took place in the Palace of Fine Arts. His last works were mosaics for the stadium of the National University and for the Insurgents' Theater, and a fresco in the Social Security Hospital No. 1. Frida Kahlo died on July 13, 1954. Diego Rivera died in Mexico City on November 25, 1957.

For More Information

Hamill, Pete. Diego Rivera. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1999.

Marnham, Patrick. Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera. New York: Knopf, 1998.

Rivera, Diego, and Gladys March. My Art, My Life; an Autobiography. New York: Citadel Press, 1960. Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1991.

Wolfe, Bertram David. The Fabulous Life of Diego Rivera. New York: Stein and Day, 1963. Reprint, New York: Cooper Square Press, 2000.

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