More Diego Rivera

Mexican painter Diego Rivera was a hugely passionate man who more than anyone illustrated for his countrymen the beauty of Latin American traditions and culture, particularly that of his homeland. Rivera was as much a revolutionary as he was artist and from the age of sixteen until his death, his life was an ongoing challenge to political bastions. Expelled from art school for his revolutionary ways, he joined the Communist party but found himself driven out for combative ideologies, in his painting he battled with patrons, at times seeing portions of his murals painted over for their Marxist leanings. It was a passionate life of chaos in all walks, fighting with the church, with his women, and frequently weathering scandals. But through it all he painted with the head, heart and hands of a genius.

Self Portrait (1941); oil on canvas

The art of this man has drawn me back again and again with work as fresh on a tenth viewing as it was the first. As recently as last week an example of his work was featured here as part of work done by Latin American artists, and last April a post devoted to Rivera titled “Appetite for Life” included five of his paintings. I can’t seem to get enough.

Born in 1886, the artist spent many years of his life abroad studying and practicing his art. He went to Spain at twenty-one, moving on to France, Belgium, Holland and England. He returned to Mexico but soon left again for Paris. In 1919 he travelled to Italy but was back in Mexico by 1921. His work was in demand and he received a number of commissions to paint frescoes and murals in foreign cities. His one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York broke all attendance records. He died in 1957 in Mexico City.

The above photo is of Rivera’s Fountain of the Aztec Rain God Tlaloc, a tiled fountain constructed between 1950-52 in Mexico City that is still a part of the municipal water system. Basically a shallow pool more than a hundred feet long and a hundred feet wide, it originally served as the ceremonial entry point for water from the Lerma River into the city’s main reservoirs. The flow of water has been diverted into a pipe, but in Rivera’s sculpture, the rain god Tlaloc, still lies on his back in the pool. In the beginning water came through Tlaloc’s face, under his mouth, and on into the Carcamo, a giant tank inside the rotunda, part of the same complex. Until the 1990s, municipal water flowed into the tank, and from here technicians could control the levels in several large reservoirs. Rivera painted the entire cement tank, including the floor, in elaborate, colorful scenes.

Portrait of a Woman (1944); oil on canvas

Portrait of Oscar Miestchaninoff (1913) oil on canvas, painted during the artist’s cubist period

Sleep (1932); lithograph

The Spare Palette

Feeling once more the pull of black and white art, a spare palette that in the hands of talented artists doubles the sense of drama, I pulled down again a book introduced here last July, Portrait of Latin America As Seen by her Print Makers. Turning unhurriedly through these monochrome plates, it is soon apparent that the work moves from primitive to folk art to fine art. Clear as well that the subjects evoke a world of rural Latin America far from our notions of modern life. One page offers a portrait of hungry peasants, another a picture of men at work, or family members entwined in embrace, and another the lined face in close-up of a village elder, a microcosm of life among people of the earth, people for whom family is life.

The three plates here each illustrate a different facet of rustic life as it is lived and completed in places far away from world capitals. The first, a work titled only Grabado (Engraving) is a portrait of grief in the face of death who has taken away a loved one. The second, by Mexico’s greatest artist portrays a family expressing gratitude for the fruits of their labor. The last print is one expressing the camaraderie of Uruguayan gauchos at the start of a long day.

Engraving by Pompeyo Audivert; wood engraving (1944)

Audivert was born in Spain in 1900, emigrating to Argentina at the age of eleven. He became a naturalized Argentinian in 1916. A painter and graphic artist, he belonged to a group of progressive artists known as “The New Generation.” He died in 1977.

Fruits of Labor by Diego Rivera; lithograph (1932)

Born in 1886, Rivera is perhaps the most well-known of Mexican artists. His work is in museums all over the world and his frescoes and murals are painted in and on numerous buildings, 300 of them in Mexico alone. An active communist, Rivera was perhaps as famous for his politics as his art. He died in 1957.

Discussing Horse Breaking by Carlos González; woodcut (1941)

Born in 1905 and raised on the treeless plains of Uruguay, González studied for a time at The School of Plastic Arts, but disagreed with his professors and returned to the country. He was a painter, muralist and graphic artist.

Appetite for Life

“An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can’t feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn’t capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won’t put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn’t a great artist.” — Diego Rivera

For many years Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957) has been a painter whose work I admire. During some years of living in New York I saw his work from time to time in different museums, but for some reason it didn’t strike a chord with me. Too young probably. It wasn’t until my university years in Los Angeles that the painter began to catch my eye during visits to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Obviously it had something to do with the cultural closeness of Mexico and California and better understanding on my part of central American art and culture. Diego Rivera led what could only be called a tumultuous life but probably no less than what you would expect in a genius, for artistic genius is certainly what Mr Rivera was. It all started at an early age…

Young master Rivera had by age ten already displayed a precocious gift for drawing and painting and so began his formal study at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. By the age of sixteen he had already acquired a taste for revolution and was expelled from the academy for participation in a student strike. Perhaps because of his great talent the school later relented and the young artist-to-be was reinstated. He refused to return and for the next five years worked on his own. At twenty-one he was awarded a scholarship to study abroad and chose Spain as his base. He also spent long periods in France, Belgium, Holland and England. He made a trip home in 1910 and held a successful exhibition where many of his paintings sold quickly. But he soon returned to Paris. Rivera spent the years from 1913-1917 painting in the Cubist style, but in 1919 made a break with that style and with a painter friend moved on to Italy. He was back once more in his native Mexico in 1921, immediately and strongly impressed by what he called ‘…the inexpressible beauty of that rich and severe, wretched and exuberant land.’ Under the influence of his native textures and colors he abandoned European allegory in favor of a style influenced by the Aztecs, mingled with traces of Cubism and the strongest of his European influences, Henri Rousseau. Around the same time Rivera joined the Communist Party, but was expelled in 1929 for difficult behavior while painting a mural in Russia.

Rivera enjoyed a productive period of years painting large murals in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and in US cities as well. In 1931 he visited New York for a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art which broke all attendance records, making Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo into celebrities. He returned to New York in 1933 to paint a mural for the RCA Building, part of Rockefeller Center, but problems arose when Rivera included a portrait of Lenin in his composition. Work was halted, the artist paid in full and completed portions of the mural covered.

Diego Rivera’s life was one filled with the chaos of politics, womanizing, voluptuous appetites and scandal. He fought with governments, with the church and with his women. But by the time of his death in 1957 he had somehow managed to reconcile most of those conflicts.