Diego Rivera: The Complete Story
Diego Rivera was the Mexican painter who covered walls with vast murals of workers, farmers, machines and revolution. The giant of the Mexican Mural Movement, he revived fresco on a public scale, put ordinary Mexicans at the center of national history, and married, twice, the artist Frida Kahlo.
He was enormous in every sense: in size, in appetite, in politics and in ego. His art was meant for the street and the factory, not the private collector.
Born: Guanajuato, Mexico, 1886
Known for: public murals, the Mexican Mural Movement
Died: Mexico City, 1957
The follow ups
Three that take a single painting apart, properly:
Was Monet really the first Impressionist, the painting that may have got there first
The secret behind Monet Magpie, one bird in the snow, and why it matters
Lady with an Ermine, detail by detail, why she is holding that animal
Murals for the people
After years in Europe absorbing Cubism and studying Italian fresco, Rivera returned to Mexico in the 1920s, when the new government wanted art that could teach a largely illiterate nation its own history.
He painted huge frescoes on public buildings, telling the story of Mexico from the Aztecs to the revolution.
His style is strong and clear, crowds of solid, dignified figures, designed to be read from across a courtyard. See the technique behind it in what is fresco painting.
Politics on the wall
Rivera was a committed Communist, and his murals are full of workers, peasants and class struggle. That politics made him famous and got him into trouble.
His mural at New York's Rockefeller Center was destroyed in 1934 because he refused to remove a portrait of the Soviet leader Lenin.
He simply repainted the work later in Mexico. His Detroit Industry murals, celebrating the auto workers, are among his greatest.
Diego and Frida
Rivera's marriage to Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous and turbulent in art. They wed, divorced and remarried, and both had many affairs, including Rivera with Frida's own sister.
She called him the second great accident of her life, after the bus crash that injured her. Their story is told in the paid feature the tragic life of Frida Kahlo.
What people ask about Diego Rivera
What is Diego Rivera famous for?
Monumental Mexican murals of history, labor and revolution.
Was he married to Frida Kahlo?
Yes, twice. More surprising details in interesting facts about Diego Rivera.
Why was his Rockefeller mural destroyed?
He refused to remove a portrait of Lenin, so it was demolished.
Why the walls still speak
Rivera made art a public, political force and gave a nation images of itself that still shape Mexican identity. His walls turned history into something a whole country could walk up to and read.
He was so large and colorful that he spun his own myths, claiming at times to have eaten human flesh as an experiment, a tall tale that says more about his showmanship than his diet.