If all the works of Diego Rivera were put together, his enormous murals scattered throughout North America and also his paintings and drawings made in his early days in Europe, the scenes he imagined in oil, watercolor or mosaic to tell his countrymen the story of their land would occupy thousands of square meters, a colossal tapestry of deeds, battles and events in which the American indigenous peoples take the lead. He, who was and continues to be a symbol of contemporary Mexico, filled his colossal and exuberant creations with allegories so that the many who could not read could decipher them and form a critical view of the colonial past. His murals, populated to the horror vacui of buildings, plants, animals and characters with their infinitely diverse faces, project in turn,as in a game of mirrors, the reflection of the many faces that built the person and the character.
More information
Diego Rivera's dream materializes 80 years later in the Anahuacalli
“There was the patriotic Diego, the communist, the artist, the human.
And all of them fought to see who would win,” says Diego María Alvarado Rivera, great-grandson of the muralist and independent curator of his work.
There is also the Rivera hinge, the figure that serves as a hinge to go through the history of Mexico from colonial times to the present, an exercise proposed by the Arte 92 gallery with its exhibition
Tlalpan Temoc in Xochitl (Flowers came down to earth).
Curated by Celia Marcos and Alberto Puig, the exhibition, which takes its title from a poem in Nahuatl, displays until March 6 a selection of works from "old" Mexico along with other modern ones: from documents from the time of Porfirio Díaz and paintings of the Virgin of Guadalupe to pieces by Leonora Carrington (Mexican by adoption) and Beatriz Zamora, as well as by Rivera himself, represented in Madrid by his descendant.
The painter from Guanajuato (1886-1957) exhibits two sketches of the grisailles that complete his frescoes in the Palace of Hernán Cortés in Cuernavaca, with scenes characteristic of his work, one on the death of an indigenous rebel leader and another on the evangelization of the Indians.
Sketch by Diego Rivera for the frescoes of the Palace of Hernán Cortés in Cuernavaca, exhibited at the Arte 92 gallery.
Exalted —as his relative defines him— to the category of “
rockstar
”, Diego Rivera was an integral part of the
holy trinity
of the Mexican muralists of the first half of the 20th century together with José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Firmly leaning politically, with a clear social aspect that he tried to champion despite the inconsistencies that persecuted him, the painter contributed to laying the foundations of the visual identity of contemporary Mexico on the walls of ancient palaces and Olympic stadiums from the vestiges of its past. And that heritage, as confirmed by his great-grandson, still remains intact. "He makes Mexicanism grow as in a snowball effect," explains the curator, who descends from the painter's marriage to Guadalupe Marín, and who inherited through the family the management of part of the painter's legacy in which he has been immersed since childhood. "He wanted to make the country great and make Mexican diversity known,not only through the people but also through the nature that he includes in his murals. Thus, despite being a country with few reading capacities, in Mexico we know our past”.
Unlike the one that has been disclosed on this side of the world —and of history— the story that the painter helped to write with images includes outstanding chapters on the cruelty, violence and excessive ambition that the conquerors demonstrated in their incursion into the misnamed New World.
In that sense, as his great-grandson emphasizes, Rivera is perhaps the least explicit of the three great muralists, the one who least reveled in the most visceral crudeness and brutality.
"I see Orozco's murals and it gives me something," the 32-year-old curator gracefully illustrates ("and 27 years of experience," he ironizes), tall and with his hair tied back in a ponytail.
“Diego Rivera was
lighter
, less bloody.
He also used warmer colors.”
View of the exhibition 'Tlalpan temoc in xochitl', at the Arte 92 gallery.
However, and although he himself was accused of colluding with power, his work as an interpreter of the wound opened by colonialism is one of the most recognizable faces of the artist and the Rivera person.
A few decades later, the current wave of historical revisionism, which is shifting his point of view to the perspective of minorities and losers, seems to prove him right.
Flagship museums such as the Prado —which has organized in 2021 its first exhibition of art created in America over the three centuries of the viceroyalty,
Tornaviaje
— finally, albeit lukewarmly, address the debate on Spain's outstanding debt to its colonies, which until now had remained, in the best of cases, hidden in the background. “Now we have information and therefore criteria, so we don't have to be at constant war. I think that is what Diego wanted”, considers Alvarado Rivera, who, in the same way, judges that gestures such as the apology that President López Obrador demanded from King Felipe VI in 2019 are unnecessary. “It makes me silly”, ditch. "You have to build bridges."
Above even the politically committed Diego Rivera, who became a legend in his time, surely the best known facet of Diego Rivera today is that of Frida Kahlo's husband.
The intermittent and tumultuous relationship they had and the unequal recognition they were awarded in life for their artistic achievements (now she is ahead of him, precisely with a self-portrait in which he also appears, as the most sought-after Latin American) are also in the eye of the hurricane of history where, in its struggle to redress a centuries-old grievance, feminism now plays a prominent role.
"Frida was never a selfless woman, but today she is more of a symbol than she thought she could be," says Alvarado Rivera.
"He became an icon."
Sketch by Diego Rivera exhibited at the Madrid gallery Arte 92.
With his drawings placed in front of the largest known statue of Hernán Cortés from the 17th century, an almost life-size figure, and surrounded by paintings and sculptures that point in both directions of the arrows of time, Diego Rivera remains thus, in the middle of the exhibition organized by Arte 92, portrayed as a man and a figure full of contradictions: the activist who was expelled from the communist party for collaborating with the government, the provocateur who placed Lenin in a mural hired by Rockefeller, the husband who he did not know how to love a single woman, the tireless worker who painted a couple of drawings for Lupe Marín every morning to earn her breakfast, the charismatic and affable guy and even, as his granddaughter, the commissioner's mother, remembered him, "the chubby good vibes” who loved to receive hugs.Also as the creator who broke the mold and linked the Catholic fervor of Mexico with the surrealist mysticism of Leonora Carrington, the painter who brought the colors of pre-Columbian paintings into dialogue with the murals of modern Mexico, and the artist who shaped the signs of identity of his country and turned them into weapons of mass education. They are not inconsistencies, rather poetic manners. "He knew it was several people," says his great-grandson. "He was someone who liked to make us think."rather manners of a poet. "He knew it was several people," says his great-grandson. "He was someone who liked to make us think."rather manners of a poet. "He knew it was several people," says his great-grandson. "He was someone who liked to make us think."
Exhibition 'Tlalpan temoc in xochitl'
Until March 6 at the Arte 92 gallery.
Calle Blanca de Navarra, 8. Madrid.
Hours: Monday to Friday, from 11:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, from 11.00 to 14.00.
Sunday closed.