Diego Rivera Prints

American Artwork

Diego Rivera gained world-wide recognition for his many works. In 1930, he made the first of many trips that would alter the course of American painting. In November of 1930, Rivera began work on his first two major American commissions: the American Stock Exchange Luncheon Club and the California School of Fine Arts.

Among his major works in the United States, a significant piece is the mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera arrived in Detroit at the height of the Great Depression. At the request of Henry Ford, he began a mural to the American worker on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Rivera completed the 27 fresco panels in 1933, entitled Detroit Industry, on the walls of a large garden court inside the institute. The completed mural depicted industrial life in the United States, concentrating on the car plant workers of Detroit. Though the fresco was the focus of much controversy, Edsel Ford, Henry Ford’s son, defended the work and it remains today Rivera’s most significant painting in America

Works Progress Administration:
Rivera, and the Mexican Muralist Movement, provided the first inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) program in depicting scenes of American life on public buildings.

The Federal Arts Program was first suggested to Roosevelt by George Biddle, who studied with Rivera. In a letter to Roosevelt, Biddle suggested that a group of muralists work on the new Justice Department Building in Washington, D.C. Biddle’s suggestion helped to develop the Public Works of Art Project.

On May 6, 1935, the WPA was created to help provide economic relief to the people of the United States who were suffering through the Great Depression. The Federal Art Project (FAP) was one of the divisions of the WPA created under Federal Project One. President Roosevelt had made several attempts prior to the FAP to provide employment for artists on relief. However, it was the FAP which provided the widest reach, creating over 5,000 jobs for artists and producing over 225,000 works of art for the American people.

Of the hundreds of American artists who would find work through the WPA, many continued on to address political concerns that had first been publicly presented by Rivera.

Artists were paid between twenty-three to thirty-five dollars a week for their work. Many of the artists such as Milton Avery, Stuart Davis, Mark Rothko, Willem De Kooning, and Jackson Pollack went on to achieve world-wide recognition.