Diego Rivera (1886 - 1957)
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodriguez was born in 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico. A naturally gifted artist, he began his formal arts education at a young age, but his talent actually began to flourish when he went to Europe. Since I was a child, I always wanted to be a painter and everyone realized they had a talent for it. When he became an adult, after studying painting in his teens, he participated in the Academia de San Pedro Alvez, in Mexico City, leaving for Europe, benefiting from a scholarship, where he stayed from 1907 to 1921. During his stay in Europe, Rivera was exposed to art Avant Garde. In Paris, he had a front row seat for the development of the Cubist movement and in 1914 he met Pablo Picasso, who expressed admiration for the work of the young Mexican. Leaving Paris, when the First World War broke out, he went to Spain, where he helped introduce Cubism into Madrid. He would travel across Europe until 1921, visiting several regions, including the south of France and Italy, and would be influenced by the works of Cézanne and Renoir. This experience enriched him a lot in artistic terms, as he had contact with several painters of the time, such as Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Juan Miró and the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, who influenced his work. At this time he started working in a studio in Madrid, Barcelona. Returning to Mexico, Rivera soon found work in the new revolutionary government. Secretary of Public Education José Vasconcelos believed in education through public art, and commissioned several paintings and murals in government buildings of Diego Rivera, as well as fellow painters David Alfaro Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco. The beauty and artistic depth of the paintings by Rivera and his fellow muralists received international acclaim. With the fame, Diego Rivera earned money to paint in other countries besides Mexico. He traveled to the Soviet Union in 1927 as part of a delegation of the Mexican communists. He painted murals at the California School of Arts, The American Stock Club Luncheon Exchange, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts, and another was taken to the Rockefeller Center in New York. However, it was never completed due to the controversy over Rivera's inclusion of Vladimir Lenin's image in the work. Although his stay in the United States was short, he is considered a major influence on American art. Rivera was an atheist and faced major problems because of that, I deal with many prejudices. His mural dream of a Sunday afternoon at Alameda Central portrayed Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign that said: God does not exist. This work caused indignation, but Rivera refused to withdraw the inscription. The painting was not exposed for nine years. After Rivera agreed to withdraw the inscription, he stated: To affirm &lsquodeus does not exist", I do not have to hide behind Don Ignacio Ramírez I am an atheist and I consider religions a form of collective neurosis. Rivera returned to Mexico in 1934, where he resumed his life as a politically active artist. He was instrumental in the desertion of Leon Trotsky from the Soviet Union to Mexico: Trotsky himself lived with Rivera and Frida Kahlo for a while. Palace of Fine Arts, was removed because it included images of Stalin and Mao Tse-tung. Still in 1934 he painted another version of El Hombre en Una Encruzilhada, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes de Mexico. In 1936 Rivera received a Request to mediate a request for political asylum to Leon Trotsky, which does so with President Lázaro Cárdenas, obtaining it. In 1937 Leon and Natalia Trotsky are received at the Azul House of Coyoacán, owned by Frida Andrew and Jacqueline Breton arrived in Mexico in 1938 and were staying at the house of Lupe Marín. The Rivera, the Bretons and the Trotskys were friends and traveled together through Mexico. For his anarchist ideas, and for supporting a conservative candidate for the presidency, he broke with Leon Trotsky in 1939. In 1940 they diagnosed him with diabetes. He separated and divorced Frida Kahlo. He was invited to exhibit at the Golden Gate Exosition in California. Siquieros commanded an attack against Leon Trotsky at Frida's house. Trotsky was murdered by Spanish Ramón Mercader. Frida went to San Francisco and reconciled with Diego. They remarried, but they went to live in separate houses. From 1936 to 1940 Rivera was dedicated especially to painting landscapes and portraits. Essayist and controversial, with André Breton published a manifest pour l"art revolutionnaire (1938). On the other hand, this great Mexican painter bequeathed to his country a remarkable collection of indigenous figures who settled in his museum house, called de Anacahualli. In 1943 he painted murals at the Institute of Cardiology in the city of Mexico. He taught composition and painting at the National College. Despite his stormy relationship, Diego was devastated by the death of Frida Kahlo, in 1954. In 1955, he married Emma Hurtado, donated to the people of Mexico, the Casa Azul de Frida, which became a museum, Anahuacalli, and the collection of pre-Hispanic pieces that amassed throughout the He suffered from cancer, he went to treat himself in the USSR. Diego Rivera died on November 24, 1957 in San Ángel, Mexico City, at his home studio, currently known as the Casa Estúdio Casa Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and his remains mortals were placed at the roundabout of illustrious people, contrary to their last will. customs, and popular character. The contribution of Diego Rivera's work to Mexican modern art was decisive in murals and easel paintings, he was a revolutionary painter who sought to bring art to the public, to the streets and buildings, a precise and direct language, full of social and realistic content. Alongside his creative effort, Diego Rivera implemented teaching in his country, which brought together a magnificent collection of the artist's art.
Testimations
My homecoming has produced an aesthetic joy that is impossible to describe. It was like I was being born again, born in a new world... I was at the center of the plastic world, where shapes and colors existed in absolute purity. In all that I saw a potential masterpiece the crowds, the markets, the parties, the battalions on the march, the workers in the store and in the fields in every bright, bright face in each child... My style was born as children are born, at a time, except that this birth came After a torturous 35-year pregnancy. Diego Rivera Rivera, which... was to turn the history of Mexico into one of the great myths of our century, could not, in remembering his own life for me, colossal repress his fantasy. I had already converted certain events, especially from their early years, into legends. Gladys March
Interview with Diego Rivera by Elenita Poniatowska
How high is the height of happiness for you? -not having been born.
Not even Frida Kahlo's love justifies her existence, Diego? -No. Because I really did her so much damage that it would be better not to have been born.
Your mother wouldn't say the same thing, Master. -I never wanted my mother and I never got along with her. . .
You're like a man who starts his job with one: I hate my mother. -Well, not so much. (Declare Diego to suffer Frida, and yet I remember a passage from Frida herself: maybe wait to hear my screams of &lsquanto is suffering" Living with a man like Diego. ) But I don't think the banks of a river suffer to leave him run. . . ) - Let's see, another small question.
Sorry for me teacher, I'm distracted. A mundane meeting.
However you appear in the newspapers every other day too. You are not a friend of the three hundred and a little more? Well! -Yes. But I don't know them.
Not even those who know how to portray? Impossible! -I mean there are two ways to know. The mundane, in which I do not know for society, because I have no honor to attend it. And the biblical sense, what can I say that I know, that I know.
And what is the biblical meaning? -No, no, no! A little don't you know? It is the feeling that Noah found his daughters to grow and multiply humanity. In addition, it does not need worldly knowledge to understand society and know everything it refers to from its origin to its present and the near future and watch carefully, deeply and passionately, and even love in the person of its best female specimens. I think that's why I've been able to paint it. It doesn't matter that love hasn't been reciprocated in most cases...
And who are the women you loved? -The women I loved? I was lucky enough to love the most wonderful woman I've ever met. She was her own poetry and the genius. Unfortunately I didn't know how to love her alone, because I was always unable to love a woman. My friends say my heart is a multifamily. For my part, I think the term Amam indicates that there is no numerical limitation of any kind, but rather encompasses all of humanity.
But what I need are names, Mr. Rivera, names. . . What are women called who you love? - If I had to say all the names, I would apologize to all of them... And that our mother from Guadalupe us free from such a thing! Second, it would gain a reputation for being pretentious, pompous and cowardly and would have closed for me the exclusive trails I intend to explore in this filthy life.
But do you only consider women as women? Or do you believe in your intelligence and superiority? Do you believe in matriarchy? -Firstly, I'm sure the woman is not the same species as a man. Humanity is the woman. Men are a subspecies of animals, almost stupid, insensitive, unsuitable for love, created by women to put the service of being intelligent and sensitive they represent. A semi-intelligent animal that performs the tasks required by the direction of women, the man is the woman, and the horse is the man and nothing else. (Well, Frida said: I won't talk about Diego as my husband because it would be ridiculous.) Diego was no longer, nor will he be someone's husband. Not even as a lover, because he covers much more than sexual limitations, and if he talks about him like my son, I wouldn't, but describe or paint my own emotion, almost my self-portrait and not Diego). -I would give everything I could do to enjoy, including the love of Frida Kahlo, the only thing I had really great, so I avoided the confusion and annoyance I had to endure to live. That doesn't mean it's me pessimistic. I am somewhat Epicurean and hedonistic, in which these tendencies fall within Marxism. It is evident, therefore, that the greatest pleasure is to exist within the wonderful universal organization of matter and to bear the inconvenience of being an inhabitant of a more poorly made world that it is possible to know, which is our beloved Earth.
So, if you could return to birth, you would return To Earth? - It's a joke.
Where would you like to go? -All parts except Earth.
Don't you believe in God? -definitely not. Because you cannot believe in a force that is implicit and present in every manifestation of energy or matter. Don't create more than when you don't understand. And the concept of the gods is a miserable decline the scale in a world where everything being excited needs to kill to live, a reduction of the principle of wonderful life that excites everything, just as desirable or undesirable maybe because we don't understand clearly.
But, master, Don't you care about religions? -I respect all religions. interests me extraordinarily on the same plane and for the same reasons that I respect all diseases and I am extremely interested in their cure.
And what would be the cure for religious diseases? -The cure is the new socialist society in its complete development, which will involve death From the prior general disclosure of the state of possible maximum knowledge of universal existence when there are no repressions, authorities, ignorance, fear of death, impotence to prevent pain. When the forces of the universe are clear, understood, there will be no reason to invent gods who give us that we are not able to obtain by our own need for strength. . . - But Master, something to obtain us always, and who aspire from the depths of our eternally incomplete being, is God.
What is the historical fact that you most admire? -The October Revolution, which gave power to Soviet proletariat and so will give the proletariat of the world.
Are they eagerly waiting for social reform? -The implementation of communism in the world and consequently the death of the State.
Mas Master, what does the Communist Party do for Mexico? -The Communist Party is the only one who defends the people from interests, or is productive, manual and intellectual, against their explorers, inside and outside. In everything that represents something favorable to the people of Mexico during the last 35 years, it is a present and visible action, the party, which means that what makes the Communist Party is to exercise patriotism or love for Mexico, expressed in actions favorable to the country. No other party can say the same, and one day the people of Mexico will belong to the Communist Party. Then, human solidarity will be established in our homeland and the greatest possible well-being possible within the real conditions of the world will come as a consequence. - Elenita, do you play with the interviewees, or not?
Master not much, not much,. . . Can I ask you the following question? -Good.
Which historical character feels greater admiration? -I couldn't choose between Federico Engels, Carlos Marx and Lenin. Defects Do you feel a greater indulgence? -For greater.
Could you give me a definition of your nature? -Unfortunately, I'm not a medium, or psychoanalyst, even philosopher. As for my character who knows, because I don't know... I think...
And don't try to know? Yes, but don't interrupt him. All my life I tried to know, without success. Introspection in me has been a complete failure.
And do you think there is someone you know? -I think all women who have had sex with me, even if they are not more friendly or professional, for example, Elenita Poniatowska.
Do you believe in virtue? -Don Francisco de Quevedo said a long time ago: There is no virtue yet in the dark. I extend the physical reality to the imaginative and psychological reality, and with that I completely agree with Don Francisco de Quevedo.
What is the writer who impressed you most? -rabelais.
by What? -This is not Marcel Proust's questionnaire and I will not answer because it is infinite.
What are your heroes and your heroines in real life? Madame Lovachewska, Marie Curie and Frida Kahlo. And turning to the top of the list, Queen Nefertiti.
Why does Nefertiti? I admire Madame Lovachewska because her conception of the parallel universe has not found that Ovoidal acts like Euclides, but I always wanted to know. Without the Polish female brain, modern science was not possible. Whenever men find a dead end in their scientific conclusions, the woman falls from the wall she closed for the man to move on. He did so and then Lovachewska Nefertiti. None of today's science would have been possible within the concept of Euclid, and when man could not move forward on the path initiated by the Polish sage, another great female brain the opportunity. Marie Curie's discoveries made possible huge spaces where currently all the knowledge of the subject, especially in relation to the most essential of its structure: the atom. I didn't know, and I know that one day all people, what can the heroism of pain, joy, despite the agony, tenderness and unlimited plastic genius in its most intimate and direct, if I had not met Frida Kahlo. This is one of my heroes.
