Diego Rivera was a revolutionary Mexican artist and controversial
politician, whose actions fluctuated from supporting
Joseph Stalin and Soviet communism to
dealing with
Henry Ford and other
tycoons promoting Pan-Americanism.
He was born Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez on December 8, 1886, in
Guanajuato, Mexico, the son of Maria del Pilar Barrientos and Diego de la Rivera y Acosta. His twin brother, Carlos, died in infancy, and
Diego Rivera was raised as the only child. His father was a municipal counselor in Guanajuato, and a man of liberal
views. He arranged an art studio for young Rivera by covering the walls
of his room with drawing paper and encouraging him to paint all over
the walls from the age of three. His mother was an
obstetrician and a very religious Catholic. Diego also had an Indian
nanny, named Antonia, who was an inspiration for many of his paintings
and nurtured his love for the indigenous culture.
In 1892 the family moved to Mexico City, where Rivera's father worked
for the Mexican government. Young Rivera studied at the Academia de San
Carlos in Mexico City from 1898-1905. In 1906 he exhibited 26 works at
San Carlos Academy. At that time his father worked as inspector at the
federal Ministry of Public Education, and was instrumental in obtaining
a government grant for Rivera to study in Europe.
He lived in Europe from 1907-1921. At first he studied in Madrid for
two years, then settled in Paris where he studied art at museums and
became involved in the Parisian cultural milieu. There Rivera developed
a friendship with
Guillaume Apollinaire,
Robert Delaunay,
Pablo Picasso,
Georges Braque,
Augusto Modigliani,
Henri Matisse and many others who defined
20th-century art. He was involved with the Montparnasse artists
community of La Rouche (The Beehive). His greatest artistic influences
after El Greco were his wife, Russian sculptor
Angelina Beloff and artists Paul Cezanne
and Pablo Picasso. Together with Beloff, Rivera experimented in making
a series of Cubist works between 1913 and 1917. Then Rivera broke from
Picasso and the Cubists. He decided to find his own style, but his art
dealer and critics did not appreciate Rivera's change of style.
Rivera met Beloff, a Russian artist trained in St. Petersburg, Russia,
in 1909 at the Brussels trade fair, beginning what Rivera regarded as
the "one and only true love of [my] life." Two years later they married
in Paris and lived together as a couple for another seven years. Rivera
revered her love, honesty and loyalty, confessing, "She gave me
everything a woman can give to a man. In return, she received from me
all the heartache and misery that a man can inflict upon a woman."
Their son was born in 1917 but died during the worldwide influenza
pandemic of 1918. Beloff was the one who saved Rivera from trouble
several times while he was out of control and violent. In one case he
was drunk at a Parisian café and started a fight with other artists,
but she managed to save him from being arrested. Eventually Rivera's
actions resulted in his destroying his own reputation among the artists
of Paris.
His family life was also in trouble. While Beloff was pregnant with his
son, Rivera lived with another Russian artist, the famous beauty Maria
(Marevna) Vorobieff-Stebelska, and they had a daughter, named
Marika Rivera, born in 1919. Unstable,
violent and a womanizer, Rivera was torn between his two women. He
tried to kill Marevna, but as his knife cut into her throat their baby
girl started to cry, which stopped him from taking the woman's life.
However, her neck was disfigured with scars from the attack--she later
did the same thing to Rivera--and they later divorced.
As passionate as ever, Rivera became involved in politics. He and
David Alfaro Siqueiros met in
Paris in 1919. They were both impressed with the Mexican revolution of
1914 and the Russian revolution of 1917. The two discussed the
development of new monumental art that would reflect Mexico's political
and cultural transformation. Both agreed that art should not be
isolated in museums and galleries, but must be made accessible to the
people outdoors, spread on the walls of public buildings. They created
the new iconography that represented complex social and historic
context. They introduced national themes, political events, religious
motifs and a pre-Hispanic history in their large-scale murals. The two
returned to Mexico and led the revival of mural art in the 20th
century. They remained friends for many years and made a profound
impact on Mexican art, known as the Mexican Mural Renaissance.
Back in Mexico, Rivera joined the Communist Party in 1922, and
co-founded with Siqueiros the "Syndicato"--a union of workers, artists
and sculptors. From 1922 to 1926 Rivera worked on 124 frescoes on the
courtyard walls of the Ministry of Public Education. His work began the
revival of mural painting and made him famous in the Western world. At
that time Rivera was married to Guadalupe Marin, and they had two
children. In 1927 he traveled with a delegation from the Mexican
Communist Party to the Soviet Union. There he took part in the 10th
Anniversary of the Russian Revolution and also attended a massive
reception party in Moscow, which was hosted by Joseph Stalin. Rivera
had discussions with Soviet cultural authorities, which led to
provocative debates. He signed risky political statements and sided
with the Trotskyite faction of Soviet communism, led by
Lev Trotskiy, together with militant
Bolsheviks; this caused his expulsion from the USSR. Back in Mexico, in
1928, he met artist
Frida Kahlo and divorced
Guadalupe Marin. He was appointed the head of the Department of Plastic
Crafts at the Ministry of Education in 1929, the year he and Kahlo
married.
He lived and worked in the US during the 1930s. In New York he began
his work on his first major American commissions. His mural at the
American Stock Exchange Luncheon Club subtly incorporated Rivera's
radical policies while trying to maintain a sense of simple history.
Rivera investigated the exploitation and struggles of the working
class. Henry Ford invited him to Detroit at the height of the Great
Depression. From 1932-1933 Rivera created a paean to the American
worker on the walls inside the garden court of the Detroit Institute of
Arts. The composition of 27 fresco panels depicted industrial life,
focusing on the workers of Detroit's auto industry. Thanks to
Edsel Ford, the frescoes survived much
controversy and remain Rivera's most significant painting in the US.
His next mural in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center
included a scene of a giant May Day demonstration with a portrait of
Soviet Communist leader
Vladimir Lenin. It was
chipped off the wall and destroyed in 1934, because Rivera refused to
remove Lenin. He kept the money from the Rockefellers and re-created
that mural at the Independent Labor Institute in Mexico City under the
title "Man, Controller of the Universe" depicting Lenin and Trotsky as
leading figures.
Rivera was instrumental in obtaining political asylum in Mexico for
Trotsky, who had been exiled by Soviet dictator Stalin. Rivera was
initially approached by his political friend,
Alberto J. Pani, who petitioned for
Trotsky. When the moment was right, Rivera sought out Mexican President
'Lazaro Cardenas', who agreed to grant
Trotsky political refuge. Trotsky and his wife were invited to live in
Rivera's home in Coyoacan. They also socialized with surrealist writer
André Breton
and his wife, and traveled together. Eventually a series of personal
and political conflicts developed between Rivera and Trotsky. Rivera
discovered that Frida and Trotsky were having an affair at his home. He
divorced Frida in 1940, and then went to San Francisco to participate
in the 1940 Golden Gate International Exposition. At the same time,
Rivera's friend Siqueiros led a failed assassination attempt on Trotsky
in Rivera's Coyoacan home. In August of 1940 Trotsky was murdered by
Ramón Mercader, a professional assassin.
Rivera and Frida Kahlo remarried in December of 1940 and lived together
until her death in 1954. After that Rivera made another trip to the
Soviet Union and had meetings with post-Stalin Soviet authorities.
Meanwhile, Rivera's first wife, Angelina Beloff, moved to Mexico
looking for him and asked him for alimony, which he never paid. Rivera,
who had remarried twice by that time and had other relationships
outside his marriages, refused to recognize her and their son, who died
while they lived together in Paris. Rivera even denied that he was ever
in a relationship with Beloff, and refused her any support. She
survived by teaching sculpture, and eventually founded the Salon de la
Plastica Mexicana in 1949. She died in 1969 in Mexico.
In 1955 Rivera married his art dealer Emma Hurtado. In the fall of 1955
he underwent a surgery and went through cobalt treatments. He spent the
last two years of his life in his native Mexico. Diego Rivera died of
heart failure on November 24, 1957, in his studio in San Angel, Mexico.
He was laid to rest in the Rotunda of Famous Men in Civil Pantheon of
Mourning in Mexico City, Mexico.
