![]() There, as the poet Guillaume Apollinaire declared, you could "now find the real artists." Indeed, Picasso took a Montparnasse studio in October 1912, and Rivera's neighbors at 26, rue du Départ included the Dutch modernist Piet Mondrian. This left-bank district was rapidly becoming the axis of a cultural vanguard from around the world. In fall of 1912 Rivera and Beloff established themselves in a studio in Montparnasse, at the heart of bohemian Paris. ![]() As his close friend and the subject of Portrait of Martín Luis Guzmán would write, Rivera "arrived calmly and late" to cubism. In truth, Rivera and Beloff spent the next few years working in Spain and France, engaged with neither the strife in Mexico nor with the cubist revolution in art that had been initiated by Picasso and Braque. Years later, embarrassed by his lack of revolutionary credentials, the artist claimed to have participated in the fighting, boasting that he had joined Emiliano Zapata's peasant forces and even plotted to kill President Díaz. Shortly after the December 20 close of his exhibition, Rivera again departed for Europe it would be more than a decade-and following the end of the Revolution-before he returned to Mexico. He married the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo in 1929.) Rivera returned to Mexico for a one-man exhibition of his work that opened on November 20, 1910, a date notorious for its association with the start of the Mexican Revolution. ![]() (The two remained a couple until Rivera departed for Mexico in 1921. In Bruges he met the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, who soon became his companion and common-law wife, and together they moved to Paris. In 1909 Rivera embarked on an itinerary of art study in Europe that included visits to Paris, London, and Belgium. Remaining in Madrid for more than two years, Rivera studied with the Spanish academic painter Eduardo Chicharro, while assiduously copying from the collections of the Museo del Prado, and over time becoming part of the city's bohemian avant-garde. With these funds, he sailed for Spain in January 1907. Upon completion of his degree, Rivera was awarded a governmental stipend to further his career in art by traveling to Europe. His prodigious talent was recognized at an early age, and by twelve he was enrolled in the national school of fine arts. Rivera's parents, both educators, were part of the Europeanized professional classes that emerged under the Porfiriato, the lengthy dictatorial regime of President Porfirio Díaz. Cuauhtémoc 06059, México, D.F.ĭiego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico, in December 1886, and moved with his family to Mexico City in the early 1890s. Images © 2004 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Av. But these references to his native land are often embedded within canvases that refer to new Spanish, French, or Russian allegiances. Many incorporate souvenirs of Mexico from afar and are infused with revolutionary sympathy and nostalgia. The paintings on view, produced during a period that coincided with both the Mexican Revolution and World War I, reflect Rivera's expatriate role and explore issues of national identity. Characterized by brighter colors and a larger scale than many early cubist pictures, his work also features highly textured surfaces executed in a variety of techniques. Yet Rivera's cubism is formally and thematically distinctive. Rivera adopted their dramatic fracturing of form, use of multiple perspective points, and flattening of the picture plane, and also borrowed favorite cubist motifs, such as liqueur bottles, musical instruments, and painted wood grain. ![]() 9, Spanish Still Life, 1915, recently bequeathed by Katharine Graham.ĭuring his time abroad, Rivera drew upon the radical innovations of cubism, inaugurated a few years earlier by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. Featuring twenty-one works created in France and Spain between 19, the selection celebrates the National Gallery's No. This exhibition highlights Rivera's early foray into cubism, a less known but profoundly important aspect of the artist's development, in which his interest in themes of nationalism and politics first emerges. In his murals of the 1920s and 1930s Rivera developed a new, modern imagery to express Mexican national identity, which featured stylized representations of the working classes and indigenous cultures and espoused revolutionary ideals. He gained international acclaim as a leader of the Mexican mural movement that sought to bring art to the masses through large-scale works on public walls. Diego María Rivera (1886-1957) is one of the most prominent Mexican artists of the twentieth century.
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