A mysterious mural
The back light
of an extraordinary art rose as a tempest in Guanajauto, Mexico. It was the 8th
December 1886 when two little babies came to the well-to-do Rivera family,
descended from Spanish nobles. Those two little babies were Diego and Carlos,
but if the light of the first one had arrived full of energy until now thanks
to his art, the Carlos one died two years after his birth. From the early days,
Diego Rivera saw life and death, brightness and darkness, joy and pain, and a
revolution to be born.
Different
cultures had an enormous influence in Diego Rivera as a young student of art.
His mother descended from a Jew family forced to convert into Catholicism and
Diego Rivera always saw Jewish culture as a dominant character in his mind. His
life experience surrounded by the Mexican culture and his studies for fifteen
years in different European countries, were also an important background to
develop his artistic talent.
He arrived to
Madrid in 1907 and from there to Paris where he could live the beginning of
cubism movement starred by Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris and George Braque. Although
he was really interested in cubism, the major influence came from Cézanne’s
post-impressionist paintings. In the early twenties, Diego Rivera returned to
Mexico where he began also his political commitment with the Mexican communist
movement. That social spirit took him to link his art with the Aztec and Maya
cultures, and his frescos presented figures and colours deeply influenced by
those Mexican ancestors, so present in the popular culture, in the Mexican
current lives.
The story of
Diego Rivera and the PCM, the Mexican Communist Party, was a long and winding
road full of suspicious embraces. He founded the Revolutionary Union of
Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors, some months before he joined the
PCM. But he was finally expelled and then began a dirty story in which Diego
Rivera became a confident of the USA informing about the PCM and the Spanish
exiled activities. It was the time of the Hitler-Stalin pact and Diego Rivera
felt very frustrated with the Communists. Those activities were recently
revealed thanks to professors William Chase and Dana Reed, from the Pittsburgli
University.
But the force of
his art continued so magnificent as ever. Murals like En
el arsenal (1928), Detroit Industry (1932-33),
El hombre en el cruce de caminos (Man
on the crossroads, 1933) which included a portrait of Lenin, a controversial
detail due to his New Yorker location, were emerging as powerfully as his own
personality and the craziness of his sentimental story with Mexican painter
Frida Kahlo.
Art, ideology,
politics, passion, betrayal, Diego Rivera was the creator of a deeply complex
story of almost 71 years, an enormous and mysterious mural always to be finished.
DIEGO RIVERA: MURALS FOR THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
A selection from MoMA 's exhibition in NAU NUA. Click here
DIEGO RIVERA: MURALS FOR THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
A selection from MoMA 's exhibition in NAU NUA. Click here
Text by Juan
Carlos Romero
Photo courtesy of Museum of Modern Art of New York, MoMA
All rights reserved