Interesting Facts About Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera was a giant of Mexican art in every sense: huge in body, in ambition and in controversy.
Here are the facts behind the muralist who painted nations and picked fights with the powerful.
If you want to keep going
If you want the detail rather than the summary:
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
The mural the Rockefellers destroyed
In 1933 Rivera painted a huge mural at Rockefeller Center in New York. When he included a portrait of the communist leader Lenin and refused to remove it, the work was covered and then destroyed.
He later repainted a version of it in Mexico City, defiant to the end.
A committed Marxist
Rivera was a lifelong communist who put workers, farmers and Mexican history at the centre of his murals.
His epic walls in Mexico and his Detroit Industry murals in the United States turned factory labour and national struggle into grand public art.
The tall tales
Rivera loved to embroider his own legend, telling outrageous stories about himself, including a claim that he had once eaten human flesh out of curiosity.
Few believed him, which was rather the point. He enjoyed being larger than life in story as well as size.
The man himself
Rivera was physically enormous, well over six feet and around three hundred pounds, with a wide, froglike face that he cheerfully mocked in his own self portraits.
He had married several times before and after Kahlo, studied in Europe where he passed through a Cubist phase alongside Picasso, and brought that grounding in modern art back to the service of Mexican muralism.
Quick facts about Diego Rivera
What is he known for?
Giant murals of Mexican history and labour.
Why was his Rockefeller mural destroyed?
He included Lenin and refused to remove him.
What were his politics?
He was a committed Marxist.
How many times did he marry?
Several, most famously twice to Frida Kahlo.
The man who painted on a national scale
Rivera believed art belonged on public walls where everyone could see it, not locked in private collections, and he covered whole buildings to prove it. More on his life in the Diego Rivera guide.