Art of the 20th Century

 

Art Styles in 20th century Art Map



 

Diego Rivera







Frida Kahlo
Portrait of Diego Rivera and Frda Kahlo
1931




"A Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art"



by Andrea Kettenmann

 

CONTENTS An Artist is Born Apprentice Years in Europe The Mural - a Post-Revolutionary Ideal Communist Ideology for Capitalist Clients From Recognition to Renown Dream of Peace and Unity: the Last Journey Appendix: collection "Frida" - Frida Kahlo

At the time of their marriage, Rivera had just been elected director of the Academy of Fine Arts in San Carlos by the students. A new plan of studies designed by Rivera, with radical innovations, led to great controversy in the media. According to his new conception, students were granted the right to share in decisions on teaching methods and the appointment of teachers and staff. Rivera prescribed that teaching had to be organized in a system in which the school was seen more as a workshop than as an academy. On the model of Leonardo da Vinci, he wished to make the students into universal artists. He was shown the most bitter hostility by students and lecturers of the School of Architecture housed in the same building. Within a year they were joined by various enemies of Rivera from among conservative artists and also the Mexican Communist Party, from which he was expelled in September 1929 for being too close to the government. Eventually the university administration gave in to the protesters, and in the middle of 1930 he was obliged to resign from his post.

The Communist Party's criticism did on the one hand relate to Rivera's attitude to Stalinist policy, and on the other to the mural commissions which he had accepted from the governments of Calles and his successors after his work at the Ministry of Education and at Chapingo. In 1929 he had been commissioned to take over an enormous project in the National Palace (Palacio Nacional) in Mexico City, the president's seat of government, as well as the decoration of the conference hall of the Ministry of Health.
 

While Rivera was working on his large-scale history of the Mexican nation in the National Palace, which occupied him for several years, the US ambassador in Mexico, Dwight W. Morrow, pressed him to paint a mural in the former Cortes Palace in Cuernavaca. Morrow was a great admirer of Rivera's work and was offering him 12,000 dollars, the highest fee that the artist had ever received for a commission, and also offering to cover the costs of a subsequent trip to the United States.
When Rivera accepted the ambassador's commission and began work on the History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, and on its completion in autumn 1930 accepted a further commission to paint murals in the United States, he gave
the Communist press in Mexico renewed opportunity to attack him and was excoriated as an "agent of the millionaire Morrow and North American imperialism". He nevertheless decided to take up an invitation to San Francisco which had been renewed several times, and together with Frida Kahlo set off expectantly for the United States.

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution
Cortes Palace
1930-1931


 

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution
Sugar Plantation, Tealtenango, Morelos
Cortes Palace
1930-1931


 

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution
Sugar Plantation, Tealtenango, Morelos
Cortes Palace
1930-1931


 

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution
Building the Cortes Palace
Cortes Palace
1930-1931


 

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution The New Religion and the Inquisition Cortes Palace 1930-1931

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution Zapata Cortes Palace 1930-1931

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution
Zapata's Horse
Cortes Palace
1930-1931


 

History of Cuernavaca and Morelos, Conquest and Revolution
Crossing the Gorge
Cortes Palace
1930-1931