Diego Rivera (born Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957) was a communist and world-famous Mexican painter influenced by Cézanne. Born in Guanajuato City, Rivera's large wall works in fresco, as well as those by Orozco, and Siqueiros, helped established the Mexican Mural Renaissance. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, New York City.

His retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City was their second. Rivera paintings are exhibited by many of the greatest museums. When his patron discovered in 1933 that Rivera had painted a portrait of Lenin in the mural Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center, Nelson Rockefeller angrily insisted the figure be painted out. Rivera refused and Rockefeller fired him and destroyed the unfinished work (dramatized by the Cradle Will Rock and Frida movies).

Diego is perhaps best known by the public world for his 1933 mural, "Man at the Crossroads," in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center. When his patron Nelson Rockefeller discovered that the mural included a portrait of Lenin and other communist imagery, he fired Rivera, and the unfinished work was eventually destroyed by Rockefeller's staff. The film Cradle Will Rock includes a dramatization of the controversy.

Biography

Personal life

Rivera was a notorious ladies' man who had fathered at least two illegitimate children by two different women: Angeline Beloff gave birth to a son, Diego (1916-1918); Maria Vorobieff-Stebelska gave birth to a daughter in 1918. He married his first wife, Guadalupe Marín, in June 1922, with whom he had two daughters. He was still married when he met art student Frida Kahlo. They married on August 21, 1929; he was 42, she was 22. Their mutual infidelities and his violent temper led to divorce in 1939, but they re-married December 8, 1940 in San Francisco. After Kahlo's death, Rivera married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946, on July 29, 1955. He died on 24 November or 25 November 1957.

Early career in Europe

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico to a Converso family who descended from Jews forced to convert to Catholicism. On his arrival in Europe in 1907 Rivera initially went to study in Barcelona, Spain, and from there proceeded to Paris, France, to live and work with the great gathering of artists in Montparnasse, especially at La Ruche, where his friend Amedeo Modigliani painted his portrait in 1914. The circle of close friends that included further Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Modigliani's wife Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, gallery owner Leopold Zborowski, and Moise Kisling, was captured for posterity by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (Marevna) in her painting "Homage to Friends from Montparnasse" (1962) .

Paris in those years was witnessing the emergence of cubism in paintings by such eminent painters as Picasso, Braque and Cezanne. From 1913 to 1918 Rivera himself enthusiastically embraced this new school of art the Metropolitin in New York. As he became so masterful developing as a cubist paintings from this time demonstrate. His paintings began to attract attention, and he was able to display them at several exhibitions.

In 1920, Rivera left France and, travelling via Italy, returned in 1921 to Mexico, where he continued his prolific career as an artist. Having been born in Guanajuato, he now became involved in the new Mexican mural movement. With such Mexican artists as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rufino Tamayo, and the French artist Jean Charlot, he began to experiment with fresco painting on large walls.

Rivera soon developed his own style of large, simplified figures and bold colors. He had also become interested in left-wing politics. Thus when he painted his first mural, he presented ethnic Mexican subjects in a political context. Many of his murals deal symbolically with Mexican society and thought after the country's 1910 Revolution. His art tells a story, in a fashion similar to that of Mayan stellae. One mural “En el Arsenal” 'in the arsenal' which shows to the left Vittorio Vidale, Tina Modotti (holding an ammunition belt), and Julio Antonio Mella (with hat) is said by some to elucidate the political murder of Mella.

Rivera's radical political beliefs, his attacks on the church, and clergy, as well as his flirtations with Trotskyists and left-wing assassins made him a controversial figure even in communist circles. Some of Rivera's best murals are in the National Palace in Mexico City and at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, Texcoco.

Career in Mexico

In 1920, urged by Alberto J. Pani - the Mexican ambassador to France, Rivera left France and traveled through Italy studying its art including Renaissance frescoes. After Jose Vasconcelos became Minister of Education, Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 to became involved in the government sponsored new Mexican (patriotic) mural "program" planned by Vasconcelos.

The program included such Mexican artists as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo, and the French artist Jean Charlot. In January 1922, he painted - experimentally in encaustic - his first significant mural Creation in the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City guarding himself with a pistol against right-wing students.

In the autumn of 1922, Rivera participated in the founding of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, and later that year he joined the Mexican Communist Party (including its Central Committee). His program murals, subsequently painted in fresco only, dealt with Mexican society and reflected the country's 1910 Revolution. Rivera developed his own native style based on large, simplified figures and bold colors with an Aztec influence clearly present in murals at the Ministry of Public Education in Mexico City begun in September 1922, intended to consist of 124 frescoes, and finished in 1928.

His art, in a fashion similar to the stellae of the Maya, tells stories. The mural “En el Arsenal” (In the Arsenal) - which shows on the right hand side Tina Modotti holding an ammunition belt and facing Julio Antonio Mella, in a light hat, and Vittorio Vidale behind in a black hat - is said by some to explain the following political murder of Mella.

Rivera's radical political beliefs, his attacks on the church and clergy, as well as his flirtations with Trotskyists and left wing assassins made him a controversial figure even in communist circles. Some of Rivera's best murals are at the National School of Agriculture at Chapingo near Texcoco (1925–27), in the Cortés Palace in Cuernavaca (1929-30), and the National Palace in Mexico City (1929–30, 1935). After returning to Mexico in 1934, the quality of his mural works was gradually declining.

Later work abroad

In the autumn of 1927, Rivera arrived in Moscow, the capital of the Soviet Union accepting an invitation to take part in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. Subsequently, he was to paint a mural for the Red Army Club in Moscow, but in 1928 he was ordered out by the authorities, because of an involvement in anti-Soviet politics, and he returned to Mexico. In 1929, Rivera was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party. His 1928 mural In the Arsenal was interpreted by some as evidence of Rivera's prior knowledge of the murder of Julio Antonio Mella allegedly by Stalinist assassin Vittorio Vidale. After divorcing Guadalupe (Lupe) Marin, Rivera married Frida Kahlo in August 1929. In December, he accepted a commission to paint murals in the Palace of Cortez in Cuernavaca from the American Ambassador to Mexico.

In 1930, Rivera accepted an invitation to the USA, where he painted several significant works. After arriving in San Francisco in November, he painted a mural for the Stock Exchange and an amusing fresco for the California School of Fine Art (now the San Francisco Art Institute). In November 1931, Rivera had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City - their second. Between 1932-1933, he completed a famous series of 27 fresco panels entitled Detroit Industry on the walls of an inner court at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

His mural Man at the Crossroads - begun in 1933 for the Rockefeller Center in New York City - was removed after a furor erupted in the press over a portrait of Lenin it contained. As a result of the negative publicity, a further commission was cancelled to paint a mural for an exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair. In December 1933, an angry and humiliated Rivera returned to Mexico. He repainted Man at the Crossroads in 1934 in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City. This surviving version was called Man, Controller of the Universe. On June 5, 1940 Rivera returned for the last time to the United States to paint a ten panel mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. Pan American Unity was unveiled November 29, 1940. The mural and its archives reside at The City College of San Francisco.

The Arizona State University Art Museum, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Arthur Ross Gallery (University of Pennsylvania), the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (UK), the DePaul University Museum (Chicago), the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Fundación Proa (Buenos Aires), the Guilford College Art Gallery (North Carolina), Harvard University Art Museums, the Hermitage Museum, the Honolulu Academy of Arts, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Milwaukee Art Museum, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Museu de Arte de São Paulo (Brazil), the Museum of Modern Art (New York City), the Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design, the National Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.), the Phoenix Art Museum (Arizona), the San Diego Museum of Art (California) and the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art (Iran) are among the public collections holding works by Diego Rivera.

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