Diego Rivera
—A Palette Full of Compassion
By Ed Lusch
February 2006 Guadalajara-Lakeside Volume 22, Number 6

    Born December 8, 1886, the day of the Fiesta of the Immaculate Conception in Guanajuato, Mexico, Diego Rivera was blessed with gigantic talent and cursed with a gluttonous appetite for life. Rivera was an intellectually gifted, precocious and, at times, bizarre child. Diego’s first words were actually paragraphs quite displeasing to his mother as they were critical of the Church. His unorthodox pronounc-ements were rewarded when at age four he was inducted into the Jacobian Society of Free Thinkers after publicly denying the existence of the Virgin Mary.
    Diego’s mother, a devout Catholic, was mortified with her son’s induction, but her nervous breakdown did not occur until several months later when she caught him dissecting a pregnant mouse to see where babies came from. This episode, along with other rather anti-social incidents, prompted his Aunt Cesara to think he was possessed. “The devil is in him and no good can ever come of him,” she insisted. From then on, until her death, despite living in poverty, she refused any help from him.
    Rivera began school at age 8. An outstanding student, he excelled at drawing but his main interests at that time were surgery, mechanics, war and women, primarily prostitutes. Diego’s father enrolled him in military school at age 10 but he left shortly thereafter, realizing at that tender age that art was “calling me to paint things with meaning.” He knew too that he would “handle all experiences as an artist and would serve it and make it serve me.”
    Diego received a scholarship to study art at the internationally famous San Carlos Academy in Mexico City but rebelled against the academy’s adherence to conformist art and left at the age of 16. His first art exhibition in 1907 earned him a scholarship to study in Europe where Cubism had become the highest form of artistic expression at that time. He studied the masters in Madrid and Paris for several years but returned to Mexico in 1921 unsatisfied with the Cubist movement. His return to Mexico City could not have been timed better for himself and his country.
    Despite independence from Spain in 1821, Mexico 100 years later was no better off then when under the heel of Spanish rulers. The disparity between the haves and have-nots had only grown wider; class distinction between those of Spanish descent and native-born descendants had dramatically increased.
    After a decade of civil war led by Poncho Villa, Emiliano Zapata and other revolutionaries, the Mexican government was overthrown and the socialist-inspired Partido Revolucionario Nacional (PNR) took charge.
    The government, led by President Alvaro Obregon (1920-1924), insti-tuted a series of public work art projects to help the nation develop a sense of identity. Rivera and other socially-conscious artists were commissioned to paint murals on the walls of public buildings illustrating the history of Mexico from Meso-America through the Revolution. Known as the Mexican Modernist School, and influenced by the Aztec and Mayan temple drawings, Mexican public edifices were decorated with theme murals awash with color and energy depicting the everyday life and heroic struggle of Mexico’s indigenous peoples.
    One such mural painted by Rivera on the courtyard walls of the Ministry of Education is three stories high and stretches two city blocks. The 124 frescos took four years to illustrate and still adorn the courtyard walls. While Rivera employed artistic license in his poetic portrayals, he was an astute researcher of Mexican history.
    Rivera’s art cannot be separated from his politics. A lifelong socialist and on-again-off-again communist, he befriended Leon Trotsky; a rival of Joseph Stalin’s. Eventually Stalin had Trotsky exiled from Russia. Moving to Mexico, Trotsky lived with Rivera and his wife, Frida, for several years. A falling out between the two men (possibly due to an affair between Trotsky and Frida) was followed by Trotsky’s assassination. Whether Rivera somehow aided in the killing is sometimes alluded to but proof is minimal.
    While Rivera’s socialist/commu-nist beliefs were the intellectual drive behind the genius of his art, during one stretch of his life it nearly led to his financial ruin. Rivera’s many Mexican murals had made him world-famous and in 1933, Nelson Rockefeller commissioned him to paint a mural for the new RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York City.
    The work entitled “Man at the Crossroad” depicted science, industry, socialism, and capitalism potentially working as one and portrayed world-famous figures such as Jean Harlow, Charlie Chaplain and Edsel Ford.
    But to steadfast capitalist Nelson Rockefeller’s chagrin, it also portrayed Russian leader Vladimir Lenin. When Rivera obstinately refused to remove Lenin’s portrayal from the fresco, the recorded dialogue was brisk:
    Rockefeller: “Sr. Rivera, I must ask you one last time to reconsider your position.”
    Rivera: “I will not compromise my vision.”
    Rockefeller: “In that case, this is your fee, paid in full as agreed, but your services are no longer required.”
    Rivera: “It’s my painting!”
    Rockefeller: “On my wall!
    The fresco was subsequently chiseled from the wall. Rivera’s commissions dried up in the US and for several years he was hard-pressed to find work even in Mexico. After a period of persona non grata, Rivera reclaimed his fame and reproduced the Rockefeller Center mural on a wall of the Palacio de Belles Artes in Mexico City where one can still view it; and commissions poured forth until his death in 1957.
    In recent years, especially since the hit movie, Frida, Rivera’s reputation in the art world has slipped as Frida’s has accelerated. Last year, at an exhibition of Mexican modernists held at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, attendees practically ignored Rivera but flocked to view the work of Frida Kahlo.
    And while Frida has become perhaps the most influential symbolic interpreter of Mexican culture, it was the muralist movement led by Rivera and others that sparked a long dormant pride in Mexico’s native peoples and the roots of Mexican history.