Diego Rivera the Red

Guadalupe Rivera MarÕn

Sep 2004 · Arte Publico Press

About this ebook

In this English translation of the colorful recreation of the childhood and early adulthood of Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, his daughter Guadalupe Rivera MarÕn explores the ideological and artistic development of a revolutionary painter. Rivera MarÕn begins with a pivotal trip that Diego took with his father at the age of six and continues through his travels in Europe, prior to his return to Mexico, where he would later marry Frida Kahlo and found the muralist movement. With bold colors and decisive brush strokes, Diego RiveraÍs legacy to the international arts community is undeniable. His murals and paintings grace iconic buildings and cultural centers throughout Mexico, in accordance with RiveraÍs commitment to making his art available to the working-class people he often portrayed in his works. In these buildings and popular spaces, RiveraÍs art serves to educate succeeding generations about Mexican history, art, and society. As passionate about politics as he was about art, Rivera dared to fight for societal change with a brush and a bomb. Not content to watch from the comfort of his studio, Rivera became an active participant in world politics, fighting alongside the Zapatistas in the hills of southern Mexico and the socialist and anarchist revolutionaries on the streets of Barcelona and Paris. Charting his childhood before the Mexican Revolution through his years in a Europe immersed in the Bolshevik revolution, this vivid portrait offers a thorough examination of RiveraÍs creative and intellectual evolution. Rivera MarÕn captures an essential time for Rivera before he became recognized as one of the premier artists of Mexico. During his travels through France, England, Spain, Switzerland, and Italy, he embraced the Avant-Garde that he later rejected and replaced with the nationalist and revolutionary art that became the basis for the great Mexican muralist movement. Populated by significant figures such as Emiliano Zapata and Vladimir Lenin, Rivera MarÕnÍs book about her fatherÍs political coming of age is both the story of the man and the epic time in which he lived.

About the author

GUADALUPE RIVERA MARN, the daughter of Diego Rivera and Guadalupe MarÕn, is founder and board chair of the Diego Rivera Foundation, an organization based in Mexico that is dedicated to preserving the late RiveraÍs legacy through research, conservation, and conferencing activities and the support of contemporary public art and artists. She is a former diplomat, a former member of congress in Mexico, and a longstanding director of the National Institute for Historical Studies on the Mexican Revolution. An accomplished writer and lecturer, Rivera MarÕn lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico. DICK GERDES is the Executive Director of The North American Institute, a non-profit organization located in Santa Fe, New Mexico.