Diego
Rivera
México
(1886-1957)
Diego
Rivera's art was one of the columns on which one of the strongest movements
in American painting was to find support: Mexican muralism. His
art greatly depends on a vocabulary born from a mixture between Gauguin
and Aztec and Mayan sculpture.
Diego Rivera,
using simplified forms and vivid colours, brilliantly rescued the pre-Colombian
past, as well as the cornerstones of Mexico's history: the land, the
factory and land workers, the customs and the popular way of life. Diego
Rivera's contribution to modern Mexican art was decisive in murals;
he was a revolutionary painter who wanted to take art to a wider
audience, to the street and buildings, using a precise and direct language
with a realistic style, full of social meaning.
It was
always Rivera's ambition to artistically depict the events, ideas and
hopes of the Mexican Revolution. To find an suitable method to accomplish
this, he tried the fresco technique, which consists of painting
directly on a wet mixture of sand and lime, to help the colour to penetrate
and be fixed when the mixture dries. Again in Europe, Rivera presented
his work in Madrid and Paris.
The murals
that Rivera painted in Mexico made him so famous that he became not
only the leader of a painting movement, but also a political leader.
His activities in the latter field placed him at the centre of several
controversies and adventures, such as when the Hotel del Prado in Mexico
City refused to show a large fresco that bore the words "Dios
no existe" ("God does not exist"), which Diego, in
turn, refused to erase, until he finally gave up, returning from a trip
to the Soviet Union in 1956 because of health problems. Diego Rivera
was a member of the Communist Party from 1923 to 1930, and from 1954
until his death.
FREE BROCHURE
SPANISH NAMES
