Diego Rivera: A True Artist for His People

By: Ashley Contreras

Diego Rivera was a very influential Mexican artist that graced the world with large murals and his art.  According to Bertram D. Wolfe, in his article Diego Rivera—People’s Artist, “Diego Rivera is one of those monsters of fecundity such as occur only infrequently in the history of mankind.” His art spoke to people; Wolfe repeatedly compared Rivera’s art to the literature of Lope de Vega, who was a very important playwright and poet that shared the similar fruitfulness. Even as a young child Rivera had shown a keen interest in art, but little did he know that he was going to have such an impact on the world.  Wolfe describes that art in the Western World was isolated from the public life, the beauty of art had “withered” and the private patronage had also reached its lowest point.  Due to Rivera’s fruitfulness, Wolfe states that Rivera was a significant example of “cultural interchange” in the Good Neighbor Era. Rivera showed America that there was much to learn from Mexico.

Rivera was born an artist and from an early age showed the immense talent that he had possessed. As the years passed by his interest grew and his art had granted him a scholarship to work abroad in Spain. He had learned from great artists while in Europe like El Greco and Goya, Pissarro and Manet, Henri Rousseu, Renoir and Picasso, among others. He had transitioned his paintings from being impressionist; with small, thin, but visible brush strokes with an emphasis on the accurate depiction of light, to cubism where objects were broken up, analyzed and re-assembled in an abstract form.  These different styles of art had given him the skills to accomplish his own spirit.

On his return to Mexico was when he truly found his calling, frescoes. Frescoes are mural paintings done on plaster on walls and ceilings.  Rivera used this form of painting to depict a very important event in Mexico’s history, the revolution. According to Wolfe, Rivera’s services of the Mexican Revolution was to make it aware of the Mexican people, of the subterranean but still living currents of indigenous popular taste and to help painters in breaking the circle of private patronage. His Mexican Communist political views inclined him to celebrate his nation’s victory and influenced him to adapt his own native style. He based his style on large, simplified figures and bold colors with portraying the Aztec influence.

His murals became popular around the world and were the inspiration that the United States need to open their eyes to that style of painting.  Rivera was invited to the US to paint his murals first in California then his work was known and wanted throughout the United States.  Wolfe sums up Rivera’s success by stating that the “ ‘politics’ of Diego Rivera will be seen to lie in this: that he learned from and painted for his people.”