Diego Rivera
(c.1886-1957), husband of
Frida
Kahlo, was arguably
the greatest of
Los
Tres Grandes , the
"Big Three"
Mexican artists who
interpreted the Revolution
and Mexican history
through the medium of
enormous murals and put
the nation's art onto an
international footing in
the first half of the
twentieth century. His
works (along with those of
José Clemente Orozco
and
David Siqueiros
) remain among the
country's most striking
sights.
Rivera studied from the
age of ten at the San
Carlos Academy in the
capital, immediately
showing immense ability,
and later moved to Paris
where he flirted with many
of the new trends, in
particular Cubism. More
importantly, though, he
and Siqueiros planned, in
exile, a popular, native
art to express the new
society in Mexico. In
1921, Rivera returned from
Europe to the aftermath of
the Revolution, and right
away began work for the
Ministry of Education at
the behest of the
socialist Education
Minister, poet and
Presidential hopeful José
Vasconcelos. Informed by
his own Communist beliefs,
and encouraged by the
leftist sympathies of the
times, Rivera embarked on
the first of his massive,
consciousness-raising murals
, whose themes - Mexican
history, the oppression of
the natives,
post-revolutionary
resurgence - were
initially more important
than their techniques.
Many of his early murals
are deceptively simple,
naive even, but in fact
Rivera's style remained
close to major trends and,
following the lead of
Siqueiros, took a
scientific approach to his
work, looking to
industrial advances for
new techniques, better
materials and fresh
inspiration. The view of
industrial growth as a
universal panacea
(particularly in their
earlier works) may have
been simplistic, but their
use of technology and
experimentation with new
methods and original
approaches often has
startling results - this
is particularly true of
Siqueiros' work at the
Polyforum Siquerios.
Communism continued to
be a major source of
motivation and inspiration
for Rivera, who was a
long-standing member of
the Mexican Communist
Party. When ideological
differences caused a rift
in Soviet politics, Rivera
supported Trotsky
's "revolutionary
internationalism",
and in 1936, after Trotsky
had spent seven years in
exile from the Soviet
Union on the run from
Stalin's henchmen and was
running out of countries
who would accept him,
Rivera used his influence
over Mexican President Lázaro
Cárdenas to get
permission for Trotsky and
his wife Natalia to enter
the country. They stayed
with Diego and Frida
rent-free at their Coyoacán
house before Trotsky moved
down the road to what is
now the Museo Casa de
León Trotsky . The
passionate and often
violent differences
between orthodox
Stalinists and Trotskyites
spilled over into the art
world creating a great
rift between Rivera and
ardent Stalinist Siqueiros,
who was later jailed for
his involvement in an
assassination attempt on
Trotsky. Though Rivera
later broke with Trotsky
and was eventually
readmitted to the
Communist party, Trotsky
continued to admire
Rivera's murals finding
them "not simply a
'painting', an object of
passive contemplation, but
a living part of the class
struggle".
