Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato City, Guanajuato, Mexico to a Converso family (descended from Jews who converted to Roman Catholicism). Rivera was sponsored to study art in Europe by Teodoro A. Dehesa Méndez, the governor of the State of Veracruz.

On his arrival in Europe in 1907 Rivera initially went to study with Eduardo Chicharro in Madrid, Spain, and from there proceeded 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. The circle of close friends that included further Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Modigliani's wife Jeanne Hébuterne, Max Jacob, gallery owner Leopold Zborowski, and Moise Kisling, was captured for posterity by Marie Vorobieff-Stebelska (Marevna) in her painting "Homage to Friends from Montparnasse" (1962).

Paris in those years was witnessing the emergence of cubism in paintings by such eminent painters as Picasso and Braque; inspired by Cezanne. From 1913 to 1918 Rivera himself enthusiastically embraced this new school of art, as his masterly cubist paintings from this time demonstrate. His paintings began to attract attention; and was able to display them at several exhibitions.

The painting below is entitled Baile Tehunatepec (1928)

In 1920 Rivera left France and, after travelling through Italy, returned to Mexico in 1921 to continue his prolific career as an artist. Having been born in Guanajuato, he became involved in the new Mexican mural movement. With such Mexican artists as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo, and the French artist Jean Charlot, he began to experiment with fresco painting on large walls. Rivera soon developed his own style of large, simplified figures and bold colors. He had also become interested in left-wing politics, and when he painted his first mural he presented ethnic Mexican subjects in a political context. Many of his murals deal symbolically with Mexican society and thought after the country's 1910 Revolution. His art, in a fashion similar to the stellae of the Maya, tells stories. The mural "En el Arsenal" (in the arsenal) [4] which shows Vittorio Vidale to the left, Tina Modotti holding an ammunition belt, and Julio Antonio Mella (with hat) is said by some to elucidate the political murder of Mella. Rivera's radical political beliefs, his attacks on the church, and clergy, as well as his flirtations with trotskyites and left wing assassins made him a controversial figure even in communist circles. Some of Rivera's best murals are in the National Palace in Mexico City and at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, near Texcoco.

This painting below is entitled Nudewith Calla Lilies (1944)

Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Many works by Diego Rivera

Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Still Life, 1913

Metropolitan Museum of Art Timetable of Art History, New York City

Museum of Modern Art, New York City
2 works online

Diego Rivera at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
2 works by Diego Rivera

Arizona State University Art Museum
Niña Parada, 1937

Art Institute of Chicago
The Weaver

Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania
Enrrielando, Moscú (Sawing Rails, Moscow), 1927

Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania
Niña con Elotes (Girl with Ears of Corn), ca.1938

Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, UK

David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island
Study for the Detroit Industry fresco

DePaul University Museum, Chicago
Wounded Soldier, 1931

Fundación Proa, Buenos Aires (partly in Spanish)

Guilford College Art Gallery, North Carolina
Note that the JPG image for "Four Figures (Masked)" is displayed smaller than its actual size

Harvard University Art Museums, Massachusetts NEW!

Diego Rivera in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art Database

Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Buenos Aires, Argentina (in Spanish)

Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil (in Portuguese)

Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design
Woman Nursing Child (image 27)

Philadelphia Museum of Art

Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona
Agrarian Leader Zapata, 1932

San Diego Museum of Art, California
Requires Flash: Click on "Artist Index", then on "R"

Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Iran
Self-Portrait

U.S. Library of Congress, Washington D.C.
Niño con Taco, lithograph, 1932

Virtual Museum of Canada
Paisaje Zapatista, 1915

Virtual Museum of Canada
El Río de Juchitán, 1950-59

Virtual Museum of Canada
Paisaje nocturno, 1947

Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas NEW!
El grande de España (El ángel azul), 1914

In 1920 Rivera left France and, after travelling through Italy, returned to Mexico in 1921 to continue his prolific career as an artist. Having been born in Guanajuato, he became involved in the new Mexican mural movement. With such Mexican artists as José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo, and the French artist Jean Charlot, he began to experiment with fresco painting on large walls. Rivera soon developed his own style of large, simplified figures and bold colors. He had also become interested in left-wing politics, and when he painted his first mural he presented ethnic Mexican subjects in a political context. Many of his murals deal symbolically with Mexican society and thought after the country's 1910 Revolution. His art, in a fashion similar to the stellae of the Maya, tells stories. The mural "En el Arsenal" (in the arsenal) [4] which shows Vittorio Vidale to the left, Tina Modotti holding an ammunition belt, and Julio Antonio Mella (with hat) is said by some to elucidate the political murder of Mella. Rivera's radical political beliefs, his attacks on the church, and clergy, as well as his flirtations with trotskyites and left wing assassins made him a controversial figure even in communist circles. Some of Rivera's best murals are in the National Palace in Mexico City and at the National Agricultural School in Chapingo, near Texcoco.

Rivera was a notorious ladies' man who had fathered at least two illegitimate children by two different women: Angeline Beloff gave birth to his only son Diego (1916-1918); Maria Vorobieff-Stebelska gave birth to a daughter in 1918. He married his first wife, Guadalupe Marín, in June 1922, with whom he had two daughters. He was still married when he met art student Frida Kahlo. They married on August 21, 1929; he was 42, she was 22. Their mutual infidelities and his violent temper led to divorce in 1939, but they re-married December 8, 1940 in San Francisco. After Kahlo's death, Rivera married Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946, on July 29, 1955. He died on 24 November or 25 November[7] 1957.