Diego Rivera

No. 9, Nature Morte Espagnole, 1915

The virtual Diego Rivera web museum.

The Diego Rivera mural project

Diego Rivera was a draughtsman and mural painter who regularly used sketchbooks and enlarged his small-scale drawings into cartoons for larger mural commissions. He produced a number of striking portraits of friends and wives in addition to often controversial portraits of society women and movie stars.

Many American artists found a model for their own social and artistic aspirations in Diego Rivera’s political radicalism and populist imagery. Born in Guanjuato, Mexico, Rivera grew up in Mexico City, attending the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts. He also worked in the studio of José Guadalupe Posada, the leading popular printmaker of the period. Between 1907 and 1921, he traveled in Europe, experimenting with a number of artistic styles, cubism in particular. Returning to Mexico, Rivera and his fellow artists José Orozco and David Siqueiros initiated the Mexican mural renaissance. The marriage of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo is one of the most famous alliances between artists. It is a well-known fact that they had a passionate and stormy relationship, filled with great love and also betrayals. They both had incredible talents and vision, but Diego’s work would be more public and monumental, whereas Frida’s was more personal and intimate in scale…