Diego Rivera

Diego and Frida just married in 1929

Huastec Civilization, 1950, National Palace, Mexico City	Diego Rivera: The Great City of Tenochtitlan, 1945, National Palace, Mexico City

Diego Rivera Self-Portrait, 1907

Diego Rivera was born December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato in Mexico, to Diego and Maria Barrientos Rivera.

In 1898 he enrolled as a full time student San Carlos Academy in Mexico City.

1906, at the annual show, he exhibited for the first time, with 26 works. Thus at age twenty Diego Rivera was established as a painter.

In 1907 Diego got a travel grant, and went to Spain.
There he travelled around, and he also went to France, Belgium, and England.

DiegoRivera ca. 1910

Portrait of Jacques Lipschitz, 1914

Sailor at Breakfast, 1914

Portrait of Two Women, 1914

In 1921 he returned to Mexico

Lupe Marin, Diego's second wife (1922-27),
painted 1938.

Diego Rivera in front of one of his murals
at the Ministry of Education, 1924

Diego Rivera: Day of the Dead, 1924,
Ministry of Education

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The Burning of the Judases, 1924,

The Judas figures are usually seen in the streets of
Mexico on Easter Saturday, since it is believed
that the traitor will only find release in suicide.
The skeleton wires and explosives represent that
at any moment they will explode.

Zapata, 1924, Ministry of Education

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The Agitator, 1926, Autonomous University of Chapingo

The Arsenal - Frida Kahlo Distributes Arms, 1928.

In the autumn of 1927 Diego took a trip to the Soviet Union, as a member of an official delegation of Mexican Communist Party functionaries and various workers representatives, to take part in the tenth anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. Diego's interest in the Workers Movement clearly show in the mural below, which shows Frida Kahlo, Diego's third wife and longtime (1929 to 1954) partner, handing out guns to workers who have decided to fight:

Diego at work on a Mural

Detroit Institue of the Arts 1932
Edsel Ford patron

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Diego Rivera: Man, Controller of the Universe, Palacio de Bella Artes, Mexico City, 1934

Diego Rivera: Man at the Crossroads, destroyed around midnight of Saturday, February 9, 1934, by being chipped from the wall and smashed to powder, at Radio City in the Rockefeller Center, New York!

Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future

A portrait of Lenin occurs to the right in the Man at the Crossroads mural...

Lucienne Bloch

Sensing that something terrible was about to happen, Diego Rivera summoned a photographer to take pictures of the almost finished mural, but the guards, who had been ordered to admit no photographers, barred him.

At last, one of Diego's assistants, Lucienne Bloch, smuggled in a Leica, consealed in her bosom. Mounting the scaffold, she surreptiously snapped as many pictures as she could without getting caught.

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Diego (less about 100lb!) and Frida in 1933 at the New Workers' School

Frida in front of an unfinished
'Workers of the World Unite' panel in 1933

Diego (TL), Frida (TR),
and Leon Trotsky (BL), 1937

The finished 'Workers of the World Unite' panel, 1933

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Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo demonstating in 1936.

Pan-American Unity, 1940,
2/10 transportable panels

Pan-American Unity, 1940,
City College of San Francisco