ART: The Mexico of My Father
By Ingrid Fuentes
Beyond the power of his imagery,
painting style, and influence in Mexican art, to talk about Diego Rivera is to
talk about Mexico, according to Guadalupe Rivera y Marín, daughter of the
famous Mexican painter.
During her talk, “The Mexico of My
Father Diego Rivera,” organized by the Center for Latin American Studies at UC
Berkeley and San Francisco’s Mexican Museum, Rivera y Marín discussed her
father’s legacy and evolution as a muralist, in conversation with Andrew
Kluger, president of the Mexican Museum.
Rivera’s paintings and murals
played a critical role in shaping contemporary Mexican culture and forming the
attitudes of Mexicans themselves towards their history, from the pre-Columbian
indigenous past through the turmoil of the Mexican Revolution and its
fulfillment during the Lázaro Cárdenas years in the 1930s. Rivera’s outsized
life was intertwined with iconic artists of the 20th century, from Pablo
Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani in Europe during the early years of that century
to contemporary muralists like David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco
in
Mexico from the 1920s onwards. And
Rivera’s art and passion linked him to defining people of his era around the
world, from Detroit industrialist Edsel Ford to Leon Trotsky, the exiled
Russian revolutionary.
“If there was someone who
understood and loved Mexico, that was my father,” said Rivera y Marín.
But it wasn’t until the age of 35
that Diego Rivera truly discovered his country. After studying art for eight
years in Europe, he only knew his hometown of Guanajuato, in central Mexico,
and Mexico City.
“He came back [to Mexico] in
1921. He was invited to collaborate with the artistic revolution that the
Secretary of Education, José Vasconcelos, planned to start,” said Rivera y
Marín.
The artistic revolution sparked by
Vasconcelos intended to define a new Mexican culture that would give meaning to
the lives and extreme sacrifices of a fractured people after the Revolution. In
a country where illiteracy hovered at 90 percent in the aftermath of a
devastating conflict, one vital tool was the promotion of mural painting
through a government-funded program. Ordinary people, from peasants to factory
workers, would be moved, inspired, educated, and amused with powerful art on public
walls. Muralists like Siqueiros and Orozco were also part of this program.
A year after his return to Mexico,
Diego Rivera developed his first mural in the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso,
at the request of Vasconcelos. In the mural called “La Creación,” Rivera
portrayed several well-known contemporary women artists from Mexico. One of the
women who posed nude for Rivera was Guadalupe Marín. She ended up marrying him
and, years later, becoming Rivera y Marín’s mother.
Diego
Rivera, “La Creación” (1922), Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. (Photo by Evgeny
Zhivago. © 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust.
Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, Mexico City.)
“After [she had posed nude], my
grandfather traveled from Guadalajara to Mexico to ask my father to marry my
mother. That was my origin, but I only found out after many years,” said Rivera
y Marín with humor.
Unfortunately, “La Creación” did
not meet Vasconcelos’s standards. He considered it “too European,” because it
did not reflect Mexico’s turbulent, traumatic reality. So Vasconcelos bought
train tickets for the artist and his new wife, Guadalupe, to travel across
Mexico. The experience would help Rivera to better understand the country, its
people, and their revolution and to translate that new perception into art.
Rivera’s long, meandering trip through Mexico provided the passion and the
subjects for his murals. His art gained meaning, relevance, and power, and his
artistic genius forged the style we associate with Rivera today.
From the lives of working-class
people to images of indigenous Mexicans, farmers, politicians, and depictions
of power struggles, Diego Rivera’s work became an account of Mexico’s reality.
In front of more than 300
attendees, Rivera y Marín explained how her father’s murals reflected Mexican
culture, such as the traditional festivities of the Día de los Muertos or the
floating parties on the Xochimilco.
As an artist with strong political
convictions — he viewed himself as a Marxist and, at times, a Communist — many
of Diego Rivera’s murals addressed social themes, like the struggle for land.
Yet his art also reflected a human universality that transcended his
ideology.
Rivera y Marín said that many of
her father’s beliefs converged in the murals he made at the chapel of the
Universidad Autónoma Chapingo.
“According to art critics, this was
Diego Rivera’s masterpiece. To the left, there is the land and the unfortunate
living conditions of farmers, and to the right, the way the land was distributed,”
said Rivera y Marín.
Diego
Rivera, “Tierra Fecundada (Fertile Land)” (1927), Chapel of the Universidad
Autónoma Chapingo. (© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo
Museums Trust. Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059,
Mexico City.)
The murals inside the chapel also
featured Rivera’s wife, Guadalupe, and their daughter as a cherub.
Over time, Rivera y Marín’s
achievements and involvement in Mexican politics would go far beyond her early
appearance floating through the sky in a mural. She became a lawyer, worked as
a lawmaker, and represented Mexico at the United Nations. She was also named
the Diego Rivera Foundation’s Chair and Director.
Rivera y Marín admitted that her
father’s radicalism and sympathy towards Marxism became a burden during her
childhood.
“My father was widely discussed and
not quite appreciated in Mexico. During his first years, when he returned from
Europe, he was a member of the Communist Party,” said Rivera y Marín. “ And as
you all know, Communists around the world are like enemies of the world.”
“This was hard for me when I was a
child, because people saw me as the daughter of a Communist. Now, my father is
the most prominent figure in Mexican art and is seen as an example of a
respected and admired Mexican around the world.”
Evidence of Rivera’s considerable
impact outside Mexico can be found in the murals he painted in the United
States in the 1930s. The Detroit Industry murals fill 27 panels in the Garden
Court of the Detroit Institute of Art, and the San Francisco Art Institute is
home to a mural called “The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City,”
which Rivera painted at the request of architect and interior designer Timothy
Pflueger.
Diego
Rivera, “The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City” (1931), San
Francisco Art Institute. (Photo by Doug Dir. © 2016 Banco de México Diego
Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del.
Cuauhtémoc 06059, Mexico City.)
“That time was very important for
my father. It was a period when Frida traveled with him, and they were both
guests of San Francisco,” said Rivera y Marín.
One of Diego Rivera’s most
controversial works was “Man at the Crossroads,” which he did during his time
in the United States at the Rockefeller Center shortly after completing the
Detroit Industry murals. The fresco generated increasingly heated criticism by
its patrons as a portrait of Vladimir Lenin among other noted revolutionaries
began to appear. After Rivera refused to remove the image from the mural and
replace it with a more “suitable” iconic American figure, John D. Rockefeller
had the mural destroyed.
“That was a great emotional shock
for my father. It depressed him,” Rivera y Marín recalled. The mural’s
destruction threw Rivera into a deep depression, which also led him to one of
the most unproductive stages of his career.
It wasn’t until 1940 that he was
resurgent as an artist: once again at the invitation of Timothy Pflueger, Diego
Rivera came to San Francisco to work under the sponsorship of the architect.
Diego Rivera sketching for “Pan
American Unity.” (Photo by Peter Stackpole/Life/Getty Images.)
The “Pan American Unity” mural
features a synthesis of art, religion, politics, and technology of the
Americas. Rivera painted it as part of the Golden Gate International Exposition
on Treasure Island.
“My father found the way in which
the United States and Mexico belong to America, and that there is a reason to
fight for America, the continent,” Rivera y Marín said. “It was a reconciliation
of my father with the United States.” She then reflected “the mural should be
in [the new home of the Mexican Museum] that is going to be built, as a tribute
to the friendship that we now have between the United States and Mexico.”
Diego Rivera, “Pan American Unity”
(1940), City College of San Francisco. (© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera
& Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del.
Cuauhtémoc 06059, Mexico City.)
Powerful Friendships
During his lifetime, Diego Rivera
surrounded himself with the most renowned artists and activists.
In Europe, for example, he
befriended many leading artists of the day, including Pablo Picasso. Around
that time, the Mexican painter also experimented with diverse art techniques.
He even tried his hand at Cubism.
“The Cubism created by Picasso was
a dark Cubism, without political meaning, and what did Diego Rivera do? He used
Cubism to confirm his political ideologies,” said Rivera y Marín to explain
“Paisaje Zapatista (Zapatista Landscape),” one of Diego Rivera’s incursions
into Cubism.
Diego
Rivera, “Zapatista Landscape (The Guerrilla)” (1915), Museo Nacional del Arte,
Mexico. (© 2016 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust.
Av. 5 de Mayo No. 2, Col. Centro, Del. Cuauhtémoc 06059, Mexico City.)
“In 1915, he was already convinced
that Zapata was a national hero and was sure of the success of the Revolution,
so this painting was done in tribute to Zapata. It has bright Mexican colors.
Picasso was very upset and stopped being my father’s friend. He also asked him
to leave the Cubist group because he had broken the Cubist tradition.”
Rivera y Marín also reflected on
her father’s relationships with public figures like Nelson Rockefeller, Leon
Trotsky, and several Mexican presidents.
Leon Trotsky, the Russian
revolutionary leader who was hounded across Europe by Stalin, was given refuge
in Mexico by Lázaro Cárdenas. Rivera had intervened on Trotsky’s behalf with
the Mexican president. The Russian exile initially stayed at Diego Rivera’s
house and became a close friend of both the painter and his wife, Frida, Rivera
y Marín said.
“Trotsky and Diego’s relationship
had some highs and lows. Why? Because Trotsky fell in love with Frida, and
Frida fell in love with Trotsky,” said Rivera y Marín.
“When my father found out, he
terminated the friendship. It was tough, because when Trotsky moved to another
house ... he was
killed.”
Diego Rivera with Lazaro Cárdenas
(left) following Frida Kahlo’s hearse, 1954. (Photo by the Hermanos Mayo.)
Kluger’s conversation with
Rivera y Marín concluded with a discussion on the state of contemporary art.
According to her, art in Mexico has fallen short of meaning and political
impact, qualities that infused art during her father’s time.
“Nowadays, contemporary art lacks
political meaning,” she said.
“In the last years, mural painting
is rarely done. It has decayed, unfortunately, and now, we see this art that I
no longer understand.”
Guadelupe Rivera y Marín’s presence
and her comments seemed to resonate deeply with the audience. One listener
observed that she felt as if she had just walked with Diego Rivera through the
art and politics of the first half of the 20th century.
Guadalupe Rivera y Marín, Ph.D., is
the daughter of Diego Rivera. She is a lawyer, former legislator, ambassador to
the United Nations, and Diego Rivera Foundation Director. She spoke at an event
co-sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and the Mexican Museum.
Yngrid Fuentes is a student in the
Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, where she works as a reporter for
UC-affiliated online news sites.
Guadalupe Rivera y Marín at
Berkeley, November 2015. (Photo by Jim Block.)
