Diego Rivera Prints

Biography, 1922-1957

In 1922, he married Guadalupe Marin, whom he met while on travels in Mexico to study the various landscapes and history. Over the next four years, Rivera worked on 124 frescoes on the courtyard walls of the Ministry of Public Education. This particular work made him famous in the Western world and truly began the revival of mural painting.

In the Fall of 1927, Diego traveled to the Soviet Union to take part in the tenth anniversary celebrations of the October Revolution. He traveled as a member of an official delegation of the Mexican Communist Party. When he returned to Mexico, his marriage to Guadalupe Marin, the mother of his two children, ended. In 1928, he went on to meet Frida Kahlo, at a weekly party.

He and Kahlo married in 1929, the year he was also appointed the head of the Department of Plastic Crafts at the Ministry of Education, a position he held until 1938. Rivera, with the help of David Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco, created the Labor Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors.

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. But it was in 1932 that Nelson Rockefeller asked him to paint a mural in the Radio Corporation Arts building in Rockefeller Center. And in 1933, he began the mural entitled Man at the Cossroads. However, conflict arose over the mural in which Rivera included Lenin, leader of the Soviet Union. As a result, the mural was never completed and was chipped off the wall and destroyed in February of 1934. Rivera was determined to compete the mural but in a different location. His new version called Man, Controller of the Universe, was done in Mexico City and included a portrait of Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Rivera returned to Mexico at the end of 1933.

Alberto Pani, a politician who had befriended Rivera in Europe, was asked to ascertain if Mexico would permit Leon Trotsky immediate political asylum. Rivera sought out President Cárdenas, who agreed to give Trotsky refuge. Trotsky and his wife lived in Rivera’s home of Coyoacán. Along with André and Jacqueline Bretón, the Trotsky and Rivera families socialized and traveled together until personal and political conflicts developed between Diego and Trotsky.

In 1940, Diego and Frida were separated, divorced, and remarried in December of the same year. Rivera went to San Francisco to participate in the 1940 Golden Gate international exposition. Meanwhile, Trotsky’s life was in danger when Siqueiros led an assassination attempt on him in his Coyoacán house. Just months later, Trotsky was assassinated by Ramón Mercader in August.

In 1947, Rivera went on to form the Commission of Mural Painting, an arm of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (INBA), with Orozco and Siqueiros. Controversy followed Rivera once again when he completed his mural at the Hotel del Prado. He included a slogan reading “God does not exist”, which kept the mural from public view for nine years.

Once again, one of Rivera’s works was removed in 1952. This time, it was in the Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, where his painting of The Nightmare of War and the Dream of Peace included Stalin and Mao Tsetung.

Rivera suffered a great loss in July of 1954 when his wife Frida Kahlo died. But one year later, he married Emma Hurtado, his dealer since 1946. Following an operation towards the end of the year, Rivera went through cobalt treatments. In April of 1956, he returned to his native Mexico and recuperated at the home of his friend Dolores Olmedo. On November 24, 1957, Rivera died of heart failure in his San Angel studio. He was buried in the Rotunda of Famous Men in Civil Pantheon of Mourning. Today, he is still considered a Latin American folk hero.

Biography, Beginning - 1886 to 1918
Life with Frida
Diego Rivera Paintings