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Fresco Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees. Commissioned by civic-minded philanthropist Rosalie Meyer Stern. The mural, painted in 1931, depicts Stern’s grandchildren in the foreground. Photo by Joaquín Martínez –Wikimedia commons

Top 10 Remarquable Facts about Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, widely regarded as the greatest Mexican painter of the twentieth century, had a profound impact on the international art world. Rivera is credited with reintroducing fresco painting into modern art and architecture, among other things. His radical political views and stormy romance with the painter Frieda Kahlo were and continue to be a source of public fascination. Rivera traveled to America from 1930 to 1940, bringing his unique vision to public spaces and galleries, enlightening and inspiring artists and laypeople alike.

Diego Rivera was born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico. He began painting at a young age and moved to Europe in 1907. Rivera spent the majority of the next fourteen years in Â鶹APP, where he encountered the works of great masters such as Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, and Matisse. Rivera was looking for a new style of painting that could express the complexities of his time while still reaching a large audience. He didn’t find his medium until he started studying Renaissance frescoes in Italy. Rivera returned to Mexico with a vision of the future of the fresco and a strong belief in public art.

1. Diego enrolled in art school at twelve years old

Diego’s artistic talent was encouraged by his parents, who enrolled him in the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts when he was about 12 years old. Under the tutelage of a largely conservative faculty, he studied traditional painting and sculpting techniques. Gerardo Murillo, a fellow student at the academy, would become a driving force behind the Mexican Mural Movement in the early twentieth century, in which Rivera participated. In 1905, the two students took part in an exhibition organized by the editors of Savia Moderna magazine, along with a group of other emerging artists.

2. Rivera’s work was influenced by European contemporary artists

One of Diego Rivera’s mammoth Detroit Industry murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Photo by ashleystreet

Rivera received government funding to study in Europe in 1907. The artist’s first stop was Madrid, where he studied at the San Fernando Royal Academy with Realist painter Eduardo Chicharro Aguera. Rivera created paintings such as “Night Scene in Avila,” which combines elements of Realism and Impressionism. He became acquainted with the paintings of Spanish masters such as El Greco, Francisco Goya, and Diego Velazquez at Madrid’s Prada Museum, all of whom would influence his artistic development.

3.  Diego has been portrayed in two movies

Rivera was portrayed on film by Ruben Blades in the 1999 film Cradle Will Rock. Rivera was later brought to life by Alfred Molina, who co-starred with Salma Hayek in the 2002 acclaimed biographical film Frida.

4.  Rivera was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party

Mexican Communist Party logo Photo by Partido Comunista Mexicano

His radical educational ideas enraged the conservative faculty and student body, and he was expelled from the Communist Party for his cooperation with the government. Members of the party were also skeptical of his alleged Trotskyite sympathies.

5. He established Mexicanidad, a famous art style

Rivera is credited with establishing the ‘Mexicanidad’ art style, which lays emphasis on Mexican culture. One of its primary characteristics is the reduction of three-dimensional objects to two dimensions. It grew into a movement that included other well-known Mexican artists like Orozco, Kahlo, and Siqueiros.

6. The Rockefeller family admired his artistic vision

Rivera was commissioned by the Rockefellers to paint a mural for the lobby of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center in 1933. “Man at the Crossroads” was supposed to depict the twentieth century’s social, political, industrial, and scientific possibilities. Rivera included a scene of a massive May Day demonstration of workers marching with red banners in the painting. The clear portrait of Lenin leading the demonstration, rather than the panel’s subject matter, enraged the audience. Rivera was ordered to stop when he refused to remove the portrait, and the painting was destroyed. Rivera used the Rockefellers’ money the same year to create a mural for the Independent Labor Institute with Lenin as its central figure.

7. Rivera was an atheist

His Alameda mural Dreams of a Sunday depicted Ignacio Ramrez holding a sign that read, “God does not exist.” This work sparked outrage, but Rivera refused to have the inscription removed. Rivera agreed to remove the inscription and the painting was not shown for nine years. “To affirm ‘God does not exist,’ I do not have to hide behind Don Ignacio Ramrez; I am an atheist, and I regard religions as a form of collective neurosis,” he said.

8. Diego spoke positively about cannibalism

Rivera claimed in his autobiography that he engaged in cannibalism in Mexico in 1904, particularly enjoying the taste of brains. This claim has been deemed factually dubious. In his autobiography, he stated: “I believe that when man evolves a civilization more advanced than the mechanized but still primitive one he currently has, eating human flesh will be legalized. For by then, man will have abandoned all superstitions and irrational taboos.”

9.  He was a life-long Marxist

Rivera, who was a member of the Mexican Communist Party and had strong ties to the Soviet Union, is an example of a socially conscious artist. His art reflected his outspoken support for left-wing political causes, depicting subjects such as Mexican peasants, American workers, and revolutionary figures such as Emiliano Zapata and Vladimir Lenin. His outspoken, uncompromising leftist politics occasionally clashed with the wishes of wealthy patrons, causing significant controversy both inside and outside the art world.

10. He was married to the painter Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera bronze sculpture, in the Frida Kahlo Park, center of Coyoacán. Photo by Ines Suarez R. Wikimedia commons

In 1929, Rivera married fellow artist Frida Kahlo. His life and relationship with Kahlo have long been a source of fascination and speculation. He’d been twice before marrying Kahlo, who was 20 years his junior and had several children from previous relationships. Rivera and Kahlo both had a passion for radical politics and Marxism.