Diego Rivera
Rivera, Diego
Diego María Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez Diego Rivera Barrientos 迭戈·里维拉
<p>A leader of the Mexican muralist movement of the 1920s, who sought to challenge social and political iniquities, Diego Rivera often turned to indigenous themes to foster Mexican cultural pride.</p><p>After years of rigorous art training in Mexico City, he traveled throughout Europe before settling in Paris in 1912, where he befriended other emigré avant-garde artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Piet Mondrian. Rivera enjoyed a brief but sparkling period as a Cubist painter, becoming a leading member of a group of Cubists that included Albert Gleizes, Juan Gris, and Jean Metzinger. Following World War I and the Russian Revolution, Rivera, like many other artists in Paris, rejected Cubism as frivolous and inappropriate for the new age. Returning to Mexico—which itself had emerged from a decade of revolutionary struggle—he adopted monumental forms that suited the country’s new political reality and began to produce work for which he is acclaimed today: paintings, graphics, and, above all, murals depicting Mexican political and cultural life.</p><p>Although he was commissioned to paint a mural in Chicago in 1933 for the General Motors Building at the Century of Progress Exposition, a controversy over another mural resulted in negative publicity for the artist, and his commission was dismissed.</p>
Diego Rivera
Mexican, 1886-1957 Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886–1957) Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886-1957)
Written by Ilya Ehrenburg (Russian, 1891-1967)