Diego Rivera's Acapulco: a late and unexhibited work by the great muralist goes up for auction

A tropical landscape of Acapulco.

The scene shows a romantic sunset, golden in the last rays of the sun, flanked by palm trees and an intense blue sea, gentle and tender.

The oil on canvas is signed by the great Mexican muralist Diego Rivera and is part of a batch of paintings that the Morton house will put up for auction next Thursday.

The work is valued at an initial price of between 1.6 and 2.2 million pesos and along with it, creations by modern and contemporary artists from Mexico such as Dr. Atl, Rufino Tamayo, Sergio Hernández, David Alfaro Siqueiros will be put up for bid. and José Clemente Orozco.

“It is a work that has very rarely been seen, that makes it more attractive,” explains Diana Álvarez, modern art specialist at Morton.

“The particularity is that it is a landscape of Acapulco, from the last period of Diego Rivera, and it moves away from his works with social overtones, from that art for everyone,” she adds.

The brush brushes aside Marxism to surrender to a more bohemian vision.

And to the sound of the auction hammer.

Rivera was already suffering from the ravages of prostate cancer and had moved to Acapulco during the golden years, when it was the mecca of the most beautiful faces in Hollywood and on its beaches the bodies of Rita Hayworth, Elizabeth Taylor, Frank Sinatra, Gary Cooper or Cary Grant.

In the port the artist found peace and solace, but also the beauty of a bay that even today - despite the violence, degradation and destruction caused by the scourge of deadly storms such as Hurricane

Otis

- raises sighs.

“Rivera was very influenced by socialism and his easel work is minimal and he records it at the end of his life.

This type of paintings is not typical in Rivera.

It's something more personal, it's a calmer, calmer Rivera, living the last days of his life.

That makes this painting more special,” says Álvarez.

Morton specialists assure that there is not much information about this piece by Rivera (Guanajuato, 1886).

The auction house is aware that it is his, because it is dated and signed by the author and, in addition, it has a certificate of authentication confirmed by the art historian Xavier Moyssén, prepared in 1990. “It is the vision of a different Mexico.

There was no record of this work by Rivera, but we believe that it may have been a private commission and that it has passed from hand to hand.

It was never exhibited to the public,” says Ana Segoviano, another of the auction house's specialists.

The bidding for this work is organized for next Thursday and it is expected that specialists, private collectors or museum representatives will participate, who come to these events eager to expand the collections.

Those who do not have a checkbook thick enough to bid can also attend the headquarters where the company has its gallery and which shows the public the pieces it has consigned for sale.

In that gallery, located in the exclusive neighborhood of Las Lomas de Chapultepec in Mexico City, not only Rivera's work is on display, but also a landscape by Dr. Atl from 1963, whose starting price is 1.5 and 2,000 millions of pesos;

or paintings by Sergio Hernández, whose monetary value ranges between 600,000 and one million pesos.

In total, Morton puts 311 lots on the market, which in addition to paintings include graphic work, sculptures and drawings.

The piece by Oaxacan painter Sergio Hernández auctioned by Mortons.

Fabian Cadena

Mexico is now the great market for modern and contemporary art in Latin America, explains María Fernanda Serrano, manager of Morton's Art Department.

Collectors from the United States, Europe and Asia pass through here, eager for pieces of great value in the art business.

“This is without a doubt the strong market and it has not gone down in many years.

The offer in Mexico is very wide and collectors come to the country to look for modern Latin American art,” says the expert.

Serrano reports that the laws in this country are very strict and establish that works by at least eight Mexican creators are considered cultural heritage and therefore cannot go abroad, unless they have permits for an exhibition.

“If the piece was abroad, like several that Rivera painted in the United States, for example, they can sell it, but if a Mexican buys it and returns to Mexico, it can no longer leave.

Collectors can buy it, but pieces of that style stay in Mexico,” she explains.

Morton holds between seven and eight auctions a year and every spring, in May, it organizes the great auction of Latin American art, which brings together artists from all over the region.

The auction house is an intermediary, which helps the owners consign the works, advises and guides them so that the art object they want to put up for sale has a good value in the market, since prices fluctuate.

In the case of paintings, their price not only depends on the author, but also on the time in which he created it and even its size.

If the painter is alive, the house contacts him to review the piece and prove its origin.

Regarding Rivera's painting, which in this case is the central work of the auction, experts have certified that it was created in 1956, a few years before he died, and that it is an atypical work, because there are very few creations by great masters that show the port of Acapulco.

The previous Rivera piece that Morton auctioned was

Paisaje de Fontenay

, signed and dated 1917, which fetched 15.4 million pesos.

The work is part of the cubist period of the artist, who at the beginning of the last century lived for a long time in France, where, according to his biographers, he matured his pictorial style and frequented key figures in the history of art.

That piece was exhibited for a time in the Palace of Fine Arts, in Mexico City, before going to a private collection.

Although Rivera is considered the great Mexican muralist, his partner and also his painter, Frida Kahlo, unseated him in 2021 as the most sought-after Latin American artist.

One of the last portraits of the Mexican painter,

Diego and I

, from 1949, broke the record for a Latin American artist at auction, when it was auctioned for $34.9 million, which also represented a record for the work of a woman. .

Rivera's

Los Rivals had reached $10 million in 2018. “There is a

boom

in Frida's work, which is now fashionable,” says Serrano.

“But now it is very difficult to find an original work by Frida,” says the expert, who hopes that the hammer will ring loudly so that some lover of Rivera's creations will bid high and well for her romantic Acapulco sunset.

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