The Flower Carrier by Rivera

(Picture courtesy of Wally Gometz at flickr.com.)

Mural representing history of Mexico by Diego Rivera

(Picture courtesy of pegatina1 at flickr.com in Palacio Nacional.)

En El Arsenal by Diego Rivera

(Picture courtesy of Shannon at flickr.com.)

The previous Art Saturday subject was the artist Frida Kahlo, who was married to the subject of today’s post,  Diego Rivera.   Both were credited with many styles, often as impressionist, and shared the fervor of the times they lived in during the Mexican Revolution and worldwide turning away from feudal standards and repression.

From the age of ten, Rivera studied art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. He was sponsored to continue study in Europe by Teodoro A. Dehesa Méndez, the governor of the State of Veracruz. After arrival in Europe in 1907, Rivera initially went to study with Eduardo Chicharro in Madrid, Spain, and from there went 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.^[7] His circle of close friends, which included Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Amedeo Modigliani and Modigliani’s wife Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, gallery owner Léopold Zborowski, and Moise Kisling, was captured for posterity by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (Marevna) in her painting “Homage to Friends from Montparnasse” (1962).^[8]

In those years, Paris was witnessing the beginning of Cubism in paintings by such eminent painters as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Juan Gris. From 1913 to 1917, Rivera enthusiastically embraced this new school of art. Around 1917, inspired by Paul Cézanne‘s paintings, Rivera shifted toward Post-Impressionism with simple forms and large patches of vivid colors. His paintings began to attract attention, and he was able to display them at several exhibitions.

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Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 to become involved in the government sponsored Mexican mural program planned by Vasconcelos.^[10] See also Mexican muralism. 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,^[11] he painted – experimentally in encaustic – his first significant mural Creation^[12] in the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City while guarding himself with a pistol against right-wing students.

In the autumn of 1922, Rivera participated in the founding of the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, and later that year he joined the Mexican Communist Party^[13] (including its Central Committee). His 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 Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City^[14] begun in September 1922, intended to consist of one hundred and twenty-four frescoes, and finished in 1928.^[11]

His art, in a fashion similar to the steles of the Maya, tells stories. The mural En el Arsenal (In the Arsenal)^[15] shows on the right-hand side Tina Modotti holding an ammunition belt and facing Julio Antonio Mella, in a light hat, and Vittorio Vidali behind in a black hat. However, the En el Arsenal detail shown does not include the right-hand side described nor any of the three individuals mentioned; instead it shows the left-hand side with Frida Kahlo handing out munitions. Leon Trotsky lived with Rivera and Kahlo for several months while exiled in Mexico.^[16] Some of Rivera’s most famous murals are featured 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).^[17][18]

Outstanding for his participation and commemoration of changing and dramatic times as well as for his talent, Rivera made the arts a promotion of equality as well as a presentation of history.

(Picture courtesy of Joaquin Martinez at flickr.com.)

Prehistoric Mexico, cover for book, by Diego Rivera

Book cover for Pablo Neruda’s Canto General. 1950

Also, thanks, dubinsky, for linking this Bruce Springsteen tribute to Rivera;  https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=63&v=1Azxbh-zZi4