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Diego Rivera
(Dec. 8, 1886 Guanajuato, Mx. - Nov. 25, 1957 Mexico City) Mexican Oil Painting Artist Biography.
Diego Rivera, "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."
Considered the greatest Mexican painter of the 20th century, Diego Rivera had a profound effect on the international art world. Among his many contributions, Rivera is credited with the reintroduction of fresco painting into modern art and architecture. His radical political views and tempestuous romance with the famous painter Frieda Kahlo were then and remain today, a source of public intrigue.
He began to study oil painting at an early age and attended the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. From 1907 to 1921 he spent most of his time in Europe, studying and working in Spain, France and Italy. In Paris he became familiar with the innovative cubist forms of Picasso and Juan Gris and the work of earlier painters such as Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin, Pierre Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse. In Italy he studied wall paintings of the Italian Renaissance. Rivera was searching for a new form of painting, one that could express the complexities of his day and still reach a wide audience. It was not until he began to study the Renaissance frescoes of Italy that he found his medium. It was with a vision of the future of the fresco and with a strong belief in public art that Rivera returned to Mexico.
Using the fresco form in universities and other public buildings, Rivera was able to introduce his work into the everyday lives of the people. Rivera concerned himself primarily with the physical process of human development and the effects of technological progress. A life long Marxist, Rivera saw in this medium an antidote to the elite walls of galleries and museums. Throughout the twenties his fame grew with a number of large murals depicting scenes from Mexican history. Rivera was an active member of the Mexican Communist Party and in 1927 and 1928 he visited the Soviet Union and taught in Moscow. After his return to Mexico he painted murals on the history of Mexico in the National Palace in Mexico City (1929) and in the Palace of Cortez in Cuernavaca (1930). His work appealed to the people’s interest in the history of technology and progress.
In 1929 Rivera married Frida Kahlo. He was influenced by her work and included her portrait in many of his murals. In 1930, Rivera made the first of a series of trips that would alter the course of American painting. In November of that year, Rivera began work on his first two major American commissions, for the American Stock Exchange Luncheon Club and for the California School of Fine Arts. These two pieces firmly but subtly incorporated Rivera’s radical politics, while maintaining a sense of simple history. One of Rivera’s greatest gifts was his ability to condense a complex historical subject, such as the history of California’s natural resources, down to its most essential parts. In these two commissions and all of the American murals to follow, Rivera would investigate the struggles of the working class.
In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Rivera arrived in Detroit, where, at the behest of Henry Ford, he began a tribute to the American worker on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Completed in 1933, the piece depicted industrial life in the United States, concentrating on the car plant workers of Detroit. Rivera’s radical politics and independent nature had begun to draw criticism during his early years in America. Though the fresco was the focus of much controversy, Edsel Ford, Henry’s son, defended the work and it remains today Rivera’s most significant painting in America. Rivera, however, did not fare so well in his association with the Rockefellers in New York.
For several years after 1934 Diego Rivera concentrated on easel oil paintings, primarily portraits, landscapes, and images of Mexican life. Rivera remained a central force in the development of a national art in Mexico throughout his life. In 1957, at the age of seventy, Rivera died. Perhaps one his greatest legacies, was his impact on America’s conception of public art. In depicting scenes of American life on public buildings, Rivera provided the first inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s WPA program. Of the hundreds of American artists who would find work through the WPA, including Jackson Pollok, many continued on to address political concerns that had first been publicly presented by Rivera. Both his original painting style and the force of his ideas remain major influences on American painting thus becoming one of the worlds artists.
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