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Diego Rivera [Mexican Social Realist Muralist, 1887-1957]
Biography
Diego Rivera, was born in the mexican city of Guanajuato, on December 8th 1886. Throughout his scholar years the gift for painting slowly developed. When he was barely ten years old, Diego's family moved to Mexico City. There, he obtained a government scholarhip to attend to the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos (San Carlos' Fine Arts Academy), in which he remained until he was expelled in 1902, due to his participation in the student revolts of that year.
The influences he received while in Mexico's capital were varied, going from those received from his first teacher, who was a pupil of Ingres,to those from José Guadalupe Posada, engraver in whose workshop Diego worked and whose influence was to be decisive in his subsequent artistic development.
Five years later, Diego had his first exposition, which was a great success among the public; this earned him a Veracruz's government scholarship to continue his pictoric education in Spain, at the San Fernando de Madrid school. From there he traveled to France, Belgium, Holland and Great Britain, between 1908 and 1910, until he finally moved to Paris in 1911. During this trip he was influenced by post-impresionism, mainly by Paul Cézanne's art. This moved him to experiment with cubism and some other new styles, in whose languages Diego unfolded freely, creating original artworlks full of harmony. In 1910 he also exhibited forty of his artworks in Mexico, with which, even though his vigorous style was not fully developed, he obtained a favorable reaction from the public. Some related Mexican artists include Francisco Toledo, Gunther Gerzso, Rodolfo Morales and Rufino Tamayo.
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It was always Rivera's ambition to artistically depict the events, ideas and hopes of the Mexican Revolution. To find an suitable method to accomplish this, he had to try with the fresco technique, which consists of painitng directly on a wet mixture of sand and lime, to help the color penetrate it, and get fixed when the mixture dries. Again in Europe, Rivera presented his work in Madrid and Paris. In 1920 he went to Italy to study the Renaissance frescos, and investigated the mural techniques of the italian renaissance painter Giotto, whose influence made him to separate himself from the cubist movement, in order to involve himself more profoundly with the social scenes that surrounded him . Before getting back to Mexico, Diego had hundreds of sketches that he would finish at his return.
From the experiences gathered in this voyage, Rivera developed a narrative and lineal style, widely using flat colors, which he used back in Mexico, in 1921, after Álvaro Obregón's election as president. Again in his homeland, he founded, together with José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, a pictorical movement known as escuela mexicana de pintura (mexican school of painting). During that time, he worked in the elaboration of the Escuela National Preparatoria frescos in Mexico City and for the Mexican Education Ministry. To this period belongs one of his great artworks, "La tierra fecunda", which was painted for the Escuela Nacional de Agricultura de Chapingo (Chapingo National Agriculture School). He also involved himself, as well as Orozco, in politics, and in his mural paintings, wether historic or symbolic, the voice of the social-revolutionary speech and the sound of resistance to foreign oppression can be heard. Other great murals that can be seen today in Mexico are those of the Palacio de Cortés de Cuernavaca (Cortés's Palace in Cuernavaca), and those of Palacio Nacional (National Palace), in Mexico City, to name a few. In 1929, he married Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
The murals that Rivera painted in Mexico turn him so famous that he became, not only the leader of a pictoric movement, but also a political leader. His activities in the latter field placed him in the center of several controversies and adventures as, for example, when the Hotel del Prado, in Mexico City, refused to show a great fresco that beared the words "Dios no existe (God does not exist)", which Diego, in turn, refused to erase, until he finally gave up, returning from a trip to the Soviet Union in 1956, caused by health issues. Diego Rivera was a member of the Communist Party from 1923 to 1930, and from 1954 until his death.
Diego Rivera in Museums and Web Sites (Click on Link to view image)
Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan
Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Still Life, 1913
Diego Rivera at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Museum of Modern Art, New York City
2 works online
Diego Rivera at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
2 works by Diego Rivera
Arizona State University Art Museum
Niña Parada, 1937
Art Institute of Chicago
The Weaver
Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania
Enrrielando, Moscú (Sawing Rails, Moscow), 1927
David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Study for the Detroit Industry fresco
DePaul University Museum, Chicago
Wounded Soldier, 1931
Harvard University Art Museums Database, Massachusetts
Diego Rivera in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Database
Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina (in Spanish)
Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Agrarian Leader Zapata, 1932
Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran
Self-Portrait
U.S. Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
Niño con Taco, lithograph, 1932
Artyst, Peintures du Monde (in French)
California State University WorldImages Database
Ciudad de la Pintura (in Spanish)
El Poder de la Palabra (The Power of the Word) (in Spanish)
University of Michigan SILS Art Image Browser
USC Annenberg School for Communication
Diego Rivera: A Virtual Collection
Kimberly Masters' Diego Rivera/Frida Kahlo Site
The Diego Rivera Mural Project
Arte Latinoamericano
Baile en Tehuantepeg, 1928
Cargador de Flores, 1954
Kubisme (Cubism) (in Dutch)
Mexico: Splendors of Thirty Centuries
7 paintings online (scroll down)
PBS
Biography, from the American Masters TV series
Protest and Persuasion
Revolt and The New Religion mural