Diego Rivera Biography

Diego Rivera Barrientos was a Mexican muralist of communist ideology, renowned for modeling works of much social content in public buildings. He was born on December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato Mexico, son of Diego Rivera and María del Pilar Barrientos. In the year 1896, he began to receive night classes at the Academy of San Carlos in the Mexican capital, where he met the famous landscape painter José María Velasco.

For the year 1905, he received a pension from the Secretary of Education, Justo Sierra, and two years later another from the then governor of Veracruz, Teodoro A. Dehesa Méndez, Economic resources that opened the way for him to travel to Spain to do studies of works such as of Goya, El Greco and Brueghel and enter the workshop of Eduardo Chicharro, one of the most outstanding portraitists in Madrid at that time. Unlike José Clemente Orozco, who was an artist affiliated with the Constitutionalist Army, Diego Rivera did not directly participate in the political and military conflict of the Mexican Revolution, as he is said to have been.

He alternated his residence in countries such as Mexico, Ecuador, Spain, Bolivia, Argentina, and France, until half of the year 1916; in France, he managed to have the first contacts with the artists of Montparnasse. In 1917, motivated by the paintings of Paul Cézanne, he entered post-impressionism, managing to capture the attention with his finished and vivid colors, above other muralists.

In 1920, with the help of Alberto Pani, Mexico’s ambassador to France at that time, Diego Rivera left the country and moved to Italy, where he began the study of Renaissance art. A year later, he returned to Mexico where he participated in the revival of mural painting that other artists had initiated.

He began painting his first mural in January 1922 at the Simón Bolívar amphitheater of the National Preparatory School, which he called “La Creación.” For that creation, he was assisted by Carlos Merida, Jean Charlot, Amado de la Cueva, and Xavier Guerrero. The main theme of the mural was focused on the formation of the Mexican race. The painting of Diego Rivera began to become a factor of influence for the Mexican and Latin American Mural Movement.

In September 1922 he started the fresco at the Secretary of Public Education and became the co-founder of the Union of Painters, Sculptors and Revolutionary Graphic Artists. In that same year, he joined the Mexican Communist Party, which became one of the great influential factors in his work. He received permits to start with the paintings and murals of the Palacio de Cortés in Cuernavaca and the National School of Agriculture, as well as in the National Palace of Mexico City, where between 1929 and 1935 he created a narrative cycle on the history of the country from the time of the Aztecs until the twentieth century.

Between August of 1929 and May of 1930, Diego Rivera was director of the Central School of Plastic Arts, until a student movement organized against him made him resign his position.

 

TRAJECTORY ABROAD AND RETURN TO MEXICO

For the year 1927 Diego Rivera traveled to Moscow, to fulfill the invitation to the celebration of the first ten years of the October Revolution in the Soviet Union.

After his divorce with Guadalupe Marín in 1928, he became engaged to the painter Frida Kahlo in the year 1929; In the same year of his engagement with Frida, he was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party. For the year 1930, was invited to the United States to realize several works.

In 1933, he was hired by Nelson Rockefeller to paint a mural in the lobby of the RCA building in New York City, which was the main building of a group of buildings called Rockefeller Center. He called this work Man at the crossroads or The controlling man of the universe. After finishing the mural, in which he included an image of Lenin Revolutionary, Rockefeller, he saw the portrait as a personal insult and ordered that Rivera’s work to be destroyed.

After traveling abroad, he returned to Mexico in 1934, where he painted the mural of El hombre en el Cruce de Caminos, on the third floor of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico. In 1943 he was a founding member of El Colegio Nacional.

For the year 1946, he painted his work called Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central of the Hotel del Prado in Mexico City. He was also part of the commission of Mural Painting of the National Institute of Fine Arts with José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

In 1950 he illustrated the work “Canto General” by Pablo Neruda and was the winner of the National Prize of Science and Arts of Mexico. Two years later, he made the mural called “The University, the Mexican family, peace and youth sports.”

For the year 1953 Diego Rivera created one of his most important works called “Water, Origin of Life” which is found at the Teatro de Los Insurgentes in Mexico City, the mural has a great historical significance since each of the images represents part of the history of Mexico. Diego Rivera died on November 24, 1957, in Mexico City; his remains were placed in the Rotunda of the Illustrious Persons.

 

WORKS

• Of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central.
• Ceremonies and celebrations of the Totonaca culture.
• Fragment of the Man controller of the universe.
• Mural of the National Palace.
• “The man controlling the universe”

 

TRIBUTES

In honor of their work, the street adjacent to the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is named after the artist. Since 2010, Banco de México, as a tribute, presents the image of Diego Rivera on the 500 pesos bills. On December 8, 2011, Google dedicated one to him in honor of the 125th anniversary of his birth. In 1986, the Diego Rivera Mural Museum was created, with the aim of housing the dream mural of a Sunday afternoon in the Alameda Central to Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, the house where they lived was established as Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo.