Research paper

Submitted By: Yangfuxiao Mei

Course: Art and Social Change in Latin America

Instructor: Greg Landau

Diego Rivera Art work

Diego Rivera is a Mexican Muralist who was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886 and died

in 957 in Mexico City. Rivera’s paintings were bold and large-scale that stimulated the fresco

painting revival in Mexico and eventually the entire Latin Americans. In his early life, Rivera

received a government scholarship that enabled him to study art in Mexico City at the Academy

of San Carlos, coupled with a grant of Veracruz governor that enabled him to foster his studies to

Europe (Lee, 20). While in Europe, he settled in France and made friends with modern leading

painters like Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. These painters partly influenced his way of

artwork such that by 1917, Rivera abandoned his own artwork style and begun adopting the post-

impressionism of Paul Cezanne which entailed visual language with simplified forms with the

inclusion of bold colored areas in paintings.

Upon returning to Mexico, Diego Rivera met with other Mexican painters like David

Alfaro Siqueiros and they both sought to come up with a new national art. This new national art

would entail revolutionary themes meant to decorate public buildings during the Mexican

Revolution. Therefore, his first important mural while in Mexico was Creation, which he created

for the Bolivar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School, a school located in Mexico City.

By 1923, Rivera was painting for the walls that belonged to the Ministry of Public Education

buildings within the capital city of Mexico where he worked in fresco (Lee, 27). It was these

huge frescoes on the walls of Public Education Ministry that showed Rivera’s reflection of

Mexican industry, culture, and agriculture to depict the native subject matter and as well as mark

his beginning of mature painting styles.

Analysis of Rivera’s work

Rivera defines his somewhat stylized and solid human paintings by precise outlines rather

than by the conventional modeling. In this regard, Rivera’s simplified and flattened figures are

set in shallow, crowded spaces and are enlivened with bold colors that are bright. For instance, in

the painting below, Rivera depicts the Night of the Rich where people seem to be partying,

smoking and drinking wine. This shows that despite the historical social issues that Mexico was

facing at the time, Rivera was depicting that there was a section of people having a good time and

enjoying their lives through indulgence. This sets an ironical mood for those individuals who

know the historical context of Mexico at the time of the painting and what it depicts, which seem

to contrast the social problems and struggles that the Mexicans were going through at that time.

Diego Rivera: Night of the Rich

Source: Diego Rivera: a biography.

Perhaps the most famous work of Rivera is the Murals that he made at his prime age.

According to Vallen Mark, the creation of a large Mural like Rivera’s The Making of a Fresco

entails several sections created individually at a time and there is usually a fresh plaster spread

over the wall in a given area (Dickerman and Indych-López, 15). Such a mural also has a wet

plaster where a drawing is transferred there and then the pigments are quickly applied with

brushstrokes on the plaster before it dries up. In this type of mural, there is very little room for

mistakes and thus it shows that Rivera worked out his drawings, paintings, and composition in a

meticulous way with exact and precise details before the actual beginning of such a big project.

As depicted below, The Making of a Fresco is a mural that has six sections (Dickerman and

Indych-López, 16). While such a division served as a narrative purpose, it also posed a significant

insight on the technical aspects of the mural itself, to show it as a monumental work in history of

Mexican Muralists.

Diego Rivera: The Making of a Fresco. Full view at the San Francisco Art Institute showing the

building of a city.

Source: The Making of a Fresco. Events, Theory, Commentary

The Mural above shows many details that provide an insight of the many things

happening. For instance, according to Vallen Mark, on the in the upper center of the mural, Rivera

used the painter John Hastings depicted on the left and a sculptor called Clifford Wight depicted

on the right as the models in the piece of the mural. This shows that in as much as he was a great

muralist, he also had people that he looked up to, people who inspired his artwork and his talent

to the extent that he could show them in one of his greatest masterpiece mural. Diego Rivera

depicts himself in the portrait in the work where he is seen as the central figure in the section and

he appears so gigantic. The two people on the side appear to be the people painting and curving

him out in the wall. While this Mural piece depicts Rivera himself at work making a fresco, the real

focus in this mural section is that of a gigantic worker. This internationally recognized iconic

figure represent the working class all over the world. In the above mural section, the two assistants

are also at work busy helping out the main muralist.

Perhaps another outstanding aspect in the above mural is the depiction of the workers. In the

lower leftmost section, Rivera depicts a worker seemingly operating a forge on the left of the

painting, a sculpture is in the center holding a harmer ready to smash into a chisel pointed on a

wall, probably to curve out something, and the right there is a man operating a belt-machine.

According to Vallen Mark, the depiction of workers as per Rivera was very important because it is

a Marxist perspective where the workers are seen to be the sole producers of wealth in a given

economy and thus they should be treated as masters in the society. Aguilar-Moreno and Cabrera

(54) assert that Diego Rivera was a lifelong Marxists and he supported the Mexican Communist

Party with important ties to the then blooming Soviet Communism. This is why he was a lifelong

committed artist to the social movements where he expressed through his art about how he was

committed to the

leftwing politics. That is why he depicts the Mexican workers, the American workers in order to

foster his belief that one day the working class will overtake the capitalist elites.

Contribution and influence through artwork

Categorized among the greatest Mexican painters, Rivera exerted a profound effect on the

Mexican art and eventually the international art in general. According to Aguilar-Moreno and

Cabrera (59) He contributed many art styles but he is best credited with the reformation of fresco

painting that he reintroduced into modern art. The frescoes he reintroduced are paintings that

artists make on fresh plasters. By using the fresco style on public buildings and universities,

Rivera managed to reintroduce this master artwork in almost everyday life of the individuals.

This was very easy because his artwork was mostly not for sale or payment to view since

anybody around the area could see the work on the public buildings that he painted. This stance of

making his work publicly free was a way to ensure the public accessed his perfect canvas to

tackle the grand themes that were present and that would come in the future. Rivera saw that

placing his artworks in Museums was a benefit to the capitalist elites and yet he want his workers

to be freely accessible to the general public, especially the socialist workers.

Rivera’s work influenced a lot of people due to the fact that his artwork appealed to the interests

of the people in the history and progress in technology. According to Diego Rivera – Oral

Interview, during Rivera’s prime age as a painter, there was a desire to understand economic

progress that was accompanied by the continuous growth of industries in the 1930s. At such a

time, Rivera saw how the working class struggled especially due to the fragile political grounds

that were mostly controlled by capitalist elites and thus most of his artwork was a representation

of the common workers struggle in the society. According to Diego Rivera Biography, Rivera’s

work directly influenced the New Deal work programs of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Rivera drew President Roosevelt in one of his murals called “Detroit Industry” that featured the

images of American workers too on the public building walls.

References

Aguilar-Moreno, Manuel, and Erika Cabrera. Diego Rivera: a biography. ABC-CLIO, 2011.

Dickerman, Leah and Anna Indych-López. Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art.

The Museum of Modern Art, 2011.

Diego Rivera – Oral Interview. City College of San Francisco. Latin American & Latino Studies

(LALS 14: Diego Rivera: Art & Social Change). 2005.

Diego Rivera Biography. welcome to Diego Rivera 1930s America. Retrieved from:

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~MA02/rodriguez/rivera/introduction.html#top

Lee, Anthony W. Painting on the left: Diego Rivera, radical politics, and San Francisco's public

murals. Univ of California Press, 1999.

Vallen Mark. Art for a Change. Diego Rivera: The Making of a Fresco. Events, Theory,

Commentary. Retrieved from: http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/2011/12/diego-rivera-the-

making-of-a-fresco.html