1. Diego Rivera http://www.fbuch.com/

2. Diego RiveraDiego Rivera was born December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato in Mexico, to Diego and Maria Barrientos Rivera. Being a family of rather modest means, they lived in Guanajuato until 1892, when they moved to Mexico City.

4. Guanajuato

7. La calle De Avila 1908

8. At the age of ten Diego RiveraDiego Rivera was doing well in school. Passionately fond of drawing from an early age, he started taking evening painting classes at the San Carlos Academy. In 1898 he enrolled there as a full time student, and in 1906, at the annual show, he exhibited for the first time, with 26 works. At age twenty Diego RiveraDiego Rivera was well established as a painter. House Over the Bridge 1909

9. Diego's father was a municipal councellor in Guanajuato, a liberal and anticlerical man. Diego's two aunts, who lived with the family, were rather religious. Diego was interested in military issues,and he was especially fascinated by the Russian army and the conflictit was facing; the Tsar and the Orthodox Church versus Marxist Revolutionaries. Diego Rivera, self portrait 1907

10. In 1907 Diego got a travel grant, and went to Spain. He travelled extensively in Spain, and also went to France, Belgium, and England. In Brussels in 1909 he met Angelina BelhoffAngelina Belhoff, a slender, blond young Russian painter, a kind, sensitive, almostRussian unbelievably decent person,and she became Diego's partner for the next twelve years. They travelled together, mostly in Europe, and spent much time in Paris, where DiegoDiego RiveraRivera participated in several exhibitions. During this time they had many friends, and several of these were Russians. Diego, 1910

11. By 1913 Diego Rivera was fascinated by the early cubist movement, led byDiego Rivera celebrated Spaniard Pablo Picasso, and started experimenting with cubism himself. By 1914 Diego was viewed as one of the more interesting members of the Cubist movement, one of the avant garde. Diego was a great admirer of Pablo Picasso, and they became close friends. Diego confided that in Paris, when they were by themselves, they would have the best of times saying things about other painters they would never tell anybody else! Portrait of Two Women Sailor at Breakfast 1914

12. Portrait of Ramón Gomez de la Serna, 1915

13. The Architect 1915

14. The First World War broke out in Europe, and in Mexico the revolutionary folk hero Emiliano Zapata promoted returning the land to the people. It was in these years Diego RiveraDiego Rivera became a revolutionary himself, and felt the call of his country. His friend, David Sternberg, the Soviet People's Commissar of Fine Arts had invited him to Russia, andRussia Diego was tempted to go, but in 1921 he returned to Mexico instead.Mexico Emiliano Zapata

15. Zapatista Landscape: The Guerrilla An expression of his Mexican heritage and the growing call of the Mexican Revolution surrounding Diego. 1915

16. Motherhood: Angelina and the Child Diego 1916

17. Self Portrait 1918

18. In addition to his painting activities, which by now were focused increasingly on murals, Diego Rivera participated in the founding of theDiego Rivera Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors in the autumn of 1922, and later that year he joined the Mexican Communist1922 Party. In the years that followed, Diego was engaged by The (Soviet) Revolution, as his signature on the mural The Agitator illustrates:signatureThe Agitator

19. He became convinced that a new form of art should respond to “the new order of things … and that the logical place for this art … belonging to the populace, was on the walls of public buildings.”

20. Returning in 1921 to Mexico, he painted, with the assistance of younger artists, large murals dealing with the life, history, and social problems of Mexico, in the Preparatory School and the Ministry of Education in Mexico City and the Agricultural School of Chapingo. To the peasants and workers he became a sort of prophet. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0842002.html

21. First Mural, 1922-1923 The Creation

22. Day of The Dead 1924 Ministry of Education

23. Burning of the Judases 1924 Ministry of Education

24. La Molendera 1924

25. Flower Day 1925

26. The Agitator 1926

27. In the autumn of 1927 Diego took a trip to the Soviet Union, as a membertrip to the Soviet Union of an official delegation of Mexican Communist Party functionaries and various workers representatives, to take part in the tenth anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. Diego's interest in the Workers Movement clearly show in the mural below, which shows Frida Kahlo,Frida Kahlo Diego's third wife and longtime (1929 to 1954) partner, handing out guns to workers who have decided to fight:

28. 1929

29. Diego and Frida 1930

30. In the United States he painted frescoes in the luncheon club of the Stock Exchange and in the Fine Arts Building, both in San Francisco, and murals in the Detroit Institute of Arts, giving his interpretation of industrial America as exemplified in Detroit. http://www.factmonster.com/ce6/people/A0842002.html

31. Frozen Assets 1931

32. Allegory of San Francisco 1931

33. Diego and Frida 1932

34. In 1933 Diego started work on a mural, Man at the Crossroads, in Radio City inMan at the Crossroads the Rockefeller Center in New York. However, a conflict arose over a portrait ofportrait of LeninLenin, the first leader of the Soviet Union, and the mural was chipped off the wallleaderSoviet Unionthe mural and destroyed February 9, 1934. The picture below was shot before the mural was broken into into pieces:

35. Diego was determined to complete the mural, but in a different place, and after doing several murals at the New Workers School, including the Workers of the World UniteNew Workers SchoolWorkers of the World Unite panel, he left the US, after working a few years in California, Detroit and New York.

36. Then he did a new version of the Crossroads mural, called Man,CrossroadsMan, Controller of the UniverseController of the Universe, in Mexico City. Below is a detail: To the right of Lenin, the founderLeninfounder of the Soviet Union, we spotSoviet Union Leon TrotskyLeon Trotsky, another principal leader of the Russian Revolution. Russian Revolution In his later years, Leon moved to Mexico, where he was a close friend of Diego.

37. Epic of the Mexican People - Mexico Today and Tomorrow, 1934-35, Palacio Nacional, Mexico CityMexico City

38. Detail from the "Man, Controller of the Universe" mural in Mexico City, painted in 1934. The man in the center is Lenin,Lenin symbolically clasping the hands of a black American, a white Russian soldier, and a worker, as allies of the future. The mural is a reconstruction of another muralanother mural in the Rockefeller Center in Radio City, which was destroyed after a major political fracas. Basically, it was politically unacceptable to depict Lenin,the preeminent founder of the Soviet Unionfounder of the Soviet Union, as the center of the inevitable alliance between the Russian and American (people).

39. Frida Kahló shared Diego Rivera’s revolutionary feelings, shown here demonstrating in 1936.

40. Diego RiveraDiego Rivera, Leon Trotsky, and Andre Breton, 1938Leon TrotskyAndre Breton

41. Diego RiveraDiego Rivera remained loyal to the revolutionary cause all his life, and below we see him, speaking to the Mexican Communist Party, late in his life.

42. Lupe Marin, Diego's second wife (1922-27), 1938.

44. Las Manos De Dr. Moore 1940

45. Escuela de San Francisco 1940

46. The Great City of Tenochtitlan, 1945, National Palace, Mexico City

48. Retrato de Dolores Olmedo 1955

49. 1949

50. El estudio del pintor 1954

51. In 1956 the artist went to Moscow for an operation. Several months before his death he announced his affiliation with the Roman Catholic Church.

52. El desfile del Primero de mayo de Moscu 1956

53. I am Diego. I paint what I see. 1886-1957