Mexican muralist Diego Rivera

 Mexican muralist Diego Rivera – biography by Gerry Souter
 
Diego Rivera is an iconic artist of Mexico. He is celebrated for his famous murals which drew inspiration from Mexican indigenous culture and the ideals of Communism. He was also controversial for his personal adventures and misadventures. The author of the book Gerry Souter gives an objective narration of the evolution of Rivera as an artist and the circumstances and trends which shaped his art.

Rivera’s art and personality were influenced by the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) and the Russian Revolution (1917-23). Mexico, which was going through a crisis of identity after the Revolution, started recognizing and becoming proud of its indigenous culture. The country wanted to strike out an image of its own, free from the European inheritance and North American shadow. Secondly, Communism was becoming a fashion among artists and intellectuals of the country. Rivera became a believer and activist. Besides these external influences, Rivera’s own personality as an adventurer had guided his destiny. His life was filled with many women and scandals. But there was one woman who had the most decisive impact on him. It was Frida Kahlo who matched his adventures and recklessness with her own. She married him, divorced and remarried him.
 
Like other artists of his time, Rivera went for art studies and tours in Spain, France, Italy and Netherlands where he saw European art and interacted with his counterparts. He came across famous contemporaries such as Picasso and imbibed various styles and schools of thought. Rivera visited Picasso’s studio in 1914 and was awestruck by the quantity of Picasso’s paintings scattered around the walls. They had long conversations over lunch and dinner. Later, Picasso came to see Diego’s work, approved of what he saw and made Rivera part of his circle  Rivera lived the typical austere and struggling life of an artist in the Left Bank in Paris. After this, he came back to Mexico which offered him opportunities to try out mural and fresco work in public buildings. His success in Mexico had opened the doors for commissions in US in cities such as San Francisco, Detroit and New York. 
 
Besides having an extraordinary artistic talent, Rivera put in long hours of hard work in his projects. The scaffolding in front of the panels became his home where he worked, ate and often slept. Once he fell asleep, rolling off the scaffold and plummeting to the concrete below. The plastering crew found him unconscious with head injuries. 
 
Rivera was fascinated by Communism and let it influence his paintings and murals. He was a life-long believer in the ideal of Communism and mostly in denial concerning its ruthless reality. He joined the Communist party and their activities and meetings. He visited USSR where he was initially celebrated as a communist artist and was promised a mural work to be done in Moscow. However, the hosts turned hostile to him because of ideological and power struggles within the party. Later, Rivera was expelled from the Mexican Communist party accused of betraying the proletarian ideals. His membership was eventually restored. Rivera hosted Trotsky when he took refuge in Mexico and put him up in his own house for two years.
 
Rivera considered himself as a “people’s artist”. He was critical of the easel paintings which ended up in rich people’s homes. He believed that murals were the true People’s Art, painted where the public could see them. But he realized that he needed to make paintings for living. So he made lot of paintings and sold to rich people and took commissions of work from American capitalists. But his work with Rockefeller ended up as a failure. He was commissioned to make a mural work in the iconic Rockefeller building in Manhattan, New York. Rivera’s inclusion of Lenin in the murals incensed Rockefeller who got the half-finished mural demolished, although he paid Rivera the full amount as contracted. 
 
In his personal life, Rivera lead a colourful and adventurous life. He spent six months in the Mexican civil war fighting at the side of Emiliano Zapata and his southern army. Diego’s specialty was blowing trains off their tracks with explosives. For many years, he used to carry a large-calibre Colt revolver ostensibly to fight off attempts on his life. 
 
Many women had passed through his life including Russian, Mexican and American. He had numerous affairs with his models and even with the sisters of two of his wives. But one woman matched and impacted him the most. It was Frida Kahlo. In her first meeting with him she told him, “I haven’t come here to flirt, even though you are a notorious ladies’ man. Some of your good friends have advised me not to put too much stock in what you say. They say that if it’s a girl who asks your opinion and she’s not an absolute horror, you are ready to gush all over her. I just want to show you my pictures and seek your comments and advice”.  Frida was eighteen and Diego forty-three when they got married in 1929.  Frida had many affairs with both women and men including Trotsky. She used the house of her sister to meet Trotsky while the sister had an affair with her husband. 
 
Diego Rivera is part of the three greatest "los tres grandes"  Mexican muralists along with José Clemente Orozco and David Siqueiros. 
 
Satish Gujral, the famous Indian painter, received a Mexican government scholarship to study for two years (1952-54) at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico city, where he was apprenticed to Diego Rivera. Gujral worked with Rivera in the mural painting of “ Teatro de los Insurgents” in 1952-53. Later Gujral joined the studio of Siqueiros and collaborated with him in his mural works. After his return to India, Gujral had arranged an Indian government invitation to Siqueiros to visit India in 1956. The Mexican influence is evident in many of Gujral’s murals and paintings. 
 
Gujral was one of the earliest beneficiaries of the Mexican Cultural Exchange Programme started by their embassy in New Delhi established in August 1951 with ex-president Emilio Portes Gil as the first ambassador. The interview board of the embassy which interviewed various Indian artists including Ram Kumar and Satish Gujral had included the famous poet and writer Octavio Paz, who was the cultural attache in the embassy.