Mexican muralist who spent eleven years in Montparnasse first — 1909 to 1920, most of them as a serious Cubist. Modigliani painted his portrait, the 1917 'affaire Rivera' ended his Cubism in a public quarrel, and Italian frescoes sent him home to invent Mexican muralism.
Diego Rivera is filed under Mexico — the murals, the politics, Frida Kahlo — and the filing loses his first career. From 1909 to 1920 Rivera was a Montparnasse painter, and from 1913 one of the more serious Cubists in Paris: dense, inventive canvases that hung beside the movement's founders, painted at addresses including 26 rue du Départ, the building where Piet Mondrian also worked. Amedeo Modigliani, a friend and neighbour, painted his portrait in 1914.
The Paris career ended in a fistfight of words — the 1917 'affaire Rivera', a public break with the critic Pierre Reverdy that took him out of the Cubist circle — and in a discovery: a 1920–21 trip through Italy's fresco cycles showed him what wall painting could do. He sailed home in 1921, and the Mexican mural renaissance followed. The eleven Paris years are the training the murals stand on.
Rivera was born on 8 December 1886 in Guanajuato, Mexico, began drawing at three — after the death of his twin brother — and entered Mexico City's San Carlos Academy at ten. A government scholarship took him to Madrid in 1907, and by 1909 he was in Paris, where nearly every ambitious painter of his generation was heading. He settled in Montparnasse with the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, his common-law wife through the whole Paris period; their infant son died in the war winter of 1918.
His circle was the émigré Montparnasse of the 1910s: Amedeo Modigliani, who painted him twice in 1914, loose dark strokes around a heavy, amused face; Chaïm Soutine; the poets and dealers of the Café de la Rotonde, the quarter's artists' café. From 1913 he painted Cubist canvases in earnest — the Zapatista Landscape of 1915, with its rifle and sarape (the striped Mexican shawl), smuggles Mexico into the movement's grammar — and showed them with the Cubists' dealers.
In 1917 the Cubist chapter ended loudly. At a dinner, after a scornful review, Rivera struck the critic Pierre Reverdy — the 'affaire Rivera' in the art press — and the quarrel, entangled with a wider dispute about who owned Cubist doctrine, cut him off from the circle. He turned to Cézanne, to Ingres, and to doubts about easel painting itself: pictures for dealers and collectors had begun to feel, to a painter of his politics, like a private language for the rich.
The answer came from the past. In 1920–21, funded by the Mexican embassy, Rivera travelled Italy filling notebooks with Giotto, Masaccio and the Byzantine mosaics — hundreds of drawings of what painting looks like when it belongs to a wall and a public. In 1921 he sailed for Mexico, leaving Beloff in Paris, and put the lesson to work for the revolutionary government's education ministry.
What followed belongs to Mexican and American walls rather than to Paris, and it is the career the world knows: the hundreds of fresco panels of the Ministry of Public Education in Mexico City and the chapel of the agricultural school at Chapingo, the Detroit Industry cycle of 1932–33, and Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center, destroyed in 1934 for its portrait of Lenin and repainted in Mexico City as Man, Controller of the Universe. He married Frida Kahlo in 1929 — divorced 1939, remarried 1940 — and the two became the century's most scrutinized artist couple.
Rivera died in Mexico City on 24 November 1957, at seventy. The Paris canvases — the Cubist decade the murals eclipsed — hang today in Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Arte, in MoMA, and in the museum at Guanajuato built in the house where he was born.
Born on 8 December in Guanajuato, Mexico.
A government scholarship sends him to Madrid; Paris follows in 1909.
Settles in Montparnasse with the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, his companion for the whole Paris period.
Turns fully to Cubism; the Paris canvases begin.
Modigliani paints his portrait.
The 'affaire Rivera': a public quarrel with the critic Pierre Reverdy ends his place in the Cubist circle.
Travels Italy for months drawing Giotto, Masaccio and the mosaics — the fresco education the murals stand on.
Sails for Mexico, leaving Paris and Beloff; the mural commissions begin the next year.
Marries Frida Kahlo — divorced in 1939, remarried in 1940.
Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Center is halted over its Lenin portrait and destroyed the next year; he repaints it in Mexico City.
Dies in Mexico City on 24 November, aged seventy.
Sat for a portrait by · 1914
Modigliani painted Rivera at least twice in 1914, Montparnasse neighbours in the emigre circle of the 1910s; the Dusseldorf canvas sketches the heavy, amused face in loose dark strokes on ochre.
Art movement · 1907–1914
Roughly two hundred Cubist canvases painted in Montparnasse between 1913 and 1917, Zapatista Landscape the best known. The association ended with the affaire Rivera, the public 1917 quarrel with the critic Pierre Reverdy.
For about eleven years — from 1909 to 1920, longer than many of the French painters he showed beside. He lived in Montparnasse with the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, painted seriously as a Cubist from 1913, was portrayed by his friend Amedeo Modigliani in 1914, and left for Mexico in 1921 after a fresco-study trip through Italy. The murals came after; Paris was the training.
From 1913 to 1917, and a serious one — roughly two hundred Cubist canvases, shown with the movement's dealers in Paris. Zapatista Landscape (1915), with a rifle and sarape worked into the Cubist grammar, is the most famous. The chapter ended in 1917 with the 'affaire Rivera', a public quarrel with the critic Pierre Reverdy, after which he turned to Cézanne, then to the Italian fresco tradition, then home.
The 1917 scandal that ended Rivera's Cubist career. After the critic Pierre Reverdy mocked his work and his circle's theorizing, Rivera struck him at a dinner; the ensuing feud — tangled with a wider fight over who spoke for Cubist doctrine — froze him out of the movement's galleries and journals. Within four years he had left easel painting, Paris and Europe altogether.
Rivera's Paris was over before Frida Kahlo entered his life — his eleven Montparnasse years ended in 1920 and they married in Mexico in 1929. Kahlo's own Paris moment came in 1939, when André Breton's circle exhibited her there; she disliked the city and the Surrealists in about equal measure and said so in her letters.
Mexico City's Museo Nacional de Arte and the Museo Casa Diego Rivera in Guanajuato hold major groups; Zapatista Landscape is in Mexico City. In the US, MoMA's Young Man with a Fountain Pen and other canvases surface in Cubism displays. The murals stay on their walls — the Ministry of Public Education and the Palacio Nacional in Mexico City, and Detroit Industry at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Associated with · 1913–1917
Roughly two hundred Cubist canvases painted in Montparnasse between 1913 and 1917, Zapatista Landscape the best known. The association ended with the affaire Rivera, the public 1917 quarrel with the critic Pierre Reverdy.
Sat for a portrait by · 1914
Modigliani painted Rivera at least twice in 1914, Montparnasse neighbours in the emigre circle of the 1910s; the Dusseldorf canvas sketches the heavy, amused face in loose dark strokes on ochre.
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