Diego Rivera: A Guide to Rivera’s Life and Paintings

Diego Rivera (1886–1957) was a prominent Mexican painter and figure in early twentieth-century art. Known for his large fresco paintings, Rivera’s work was crucial to the establishment of the Mexican mural movement.

Between the 1920s and 1950s, Rivera created murals in Mexico—including Mexico City, Chapingo, and Cuernavaca—often imbuing themes of national pride and Indigenous heritage into his work. During the same period, Rivera also received commissions in San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. Well-known for his leftist politics and a vocal member of the Mexican Communist Party, Diego Rivera regularly included Marxist and communist imagery into his murals—a practice that drew significant attention and controversy.

Diego Rivera is also known for his relationship with fellow artist Frida Kahlo, who was 20 years his junior. Rivera and Kahlo had a turbulent relationship but were influential figures in each other’s work and art.

While Diego Rivera may be synonymous with fellow artist Frida Kahlo, he was a groundbreaking artist both before and after he met the feminist icon.

• Early life: Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico. Shortly after the death of his twin brother at age 2, Rivera began to draw. Rivera’s parents had chalkboards and canvas hung around the home to encourage their son’s passion—and to keep their walls safe from his paintings.
• Studies in Mexico: As young as 10, Rivera started studying at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. After completing school in Mexico City, the governor of Veracruz, Mexico sponsored the artist so he could study in Madrid and Paris.
• Education abroad: While in Paris, Rivera surrounded himself with artists, writers, and philosophers, and began experimenting with Cubism, which was becoming popular thanks to Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. One of these early attempts, Cubist Landscape (1912), is on display at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Soon after his foray into cubist painting, Rivera shifted gears toward post-impressionism art after finding inspiration in Paul Cézanne’s work in 1917. In 1920, Rivera moved to Italy to continue his studies, with a focus on Renaissance frescoes.
• Return to Mexico: In 1921, Rivera returned home and began work on a government-sponsored mural program with fellow Mexican artists José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Rivera’s murals gained attention as he developed a distinct style—much of which drew inspiration from the Mexican Revolution, the working class, and Indigenous Aztec and Maya cultures.
• Early murals in Mexico City: In 1922, Rivera painted Creation, his first significant mural, in the Bolívar Auditorium of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. A vocal communist and member of the Mexican Communist Party, Rivera carried a gun during the entire painting process in case he ran into right-wing political supporters.
• International commissions: In the 1930s, Rivera was hired to do murals on public buildings both at home and in the US. In Mexico, the US ambassador to Mexico commissioned him to do a piece depicting the war against Spanish conquerors in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca. Rivera painted multiple pieces in San Francisco, including The Allegory of California at the Pacific Stock Exchange and The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City for the San Francisco School of Fine Arts. For the Detroit Institute of Arts, Rivera created the 27-panel Detroit Industry Murals.

In addition to being a world-renowned muralist, Rivera was also known for his leftist politics and ties to fellow artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he had an extremely volatile relationship—and married not just once, but twice.

• Controversy: In 1933, at the height of his fame in the States, Rivera created a mural for Rockefeller Center in New York City that would be considered an absolute failure, partly due to his politics. The massive work, entitled Man at the Crossroads, included images of science, politics, history, Jupiter, and Caesar. The mural also depicted former Soviet Union leader and Marxist Vladimir Lenin. The Rockefellers demanded River remove Lenin, but the artist refused, resulting in the artwork being destroyed.
• Personal life: Rivera was married five times to four different women. In 1911, he married Russian-born artist Angelina Beloff with whom he had a son, Diego, who died at the age 2. During his marriage to Beloff, he had an affair with another Russian-born artist Marie Vorobieff, with whom he had a daughter, Marika, in the late 1910s. Rivera divorced Beloff and married Guadalupa Marín in 1922. The couple had two daughters, Ruth and Guadalupe.
• Relationship with Frida Kahlo: Not far into his marriage to Marín, Rivera met Frida Kahlo. The two began an affair and married in 1929, starting a notoriously tumultuous relationship that was rife with infidelity. Rivera and Kahlo divorced in 1939, then remarried in December 1940 and remained so until Kahlo’s death in 1954. The following year, Rivera married a fifth and final time to his agent, Emma Hurtado; they were married until his death in 1957. Neither his marriage to Kahlo or Hurtado resulted in children.
• Later life: Rivera painted until his death, working on various commissions both in the States (mostly California) and in Mexico. In 1949, Mexico City’s Palace of Fine Arts hosted a retrospective exhibit celebrating 50 years of his work. When he died from heart disease, at the age of 70, Mexico declared it a national day of mourning.

Diego Rivera is known for his large fresco murals, which often feature themes of national pride and communist images.

1. 1. Bright colors: Rivera loved to experiment with color and wasn’t afraid to explore the impact they could have on an audience. Rivera’s use of color is methodical and intentional, breathing life into each piece.
2. 2. Large-scale pieces: Although Rivera didn’t only paint large-scale pieces, he most excelled at murals.
3. 3. Political references: While some artists might have steered clear of politics, Rivera did not. As a communist with Marxist leanings, he used his art to convey his political views, including his admiration of Lenin.
4. 4. Historical references: Rivera tackled complicated topics, such as the Mexican Revolution, Spanish conquerors, Russian Revolution, as well as dictators and controversial leaders throughout time.

Diego Rivera was a prolific painter, working consistently over the course of 50 years. He created many notable frescoes in Mexico, the United States, and elsewhere, including the following:

1. 1. Man at the Crossroads (1933): Although destroyed because he included imagery of Vladimir Lenin, it doesn’t lessen the fact that the mural was extraordinary in how it portrayed contemporary social and industrial aspects of the time. Rivera never got a chance to complete it. Today, the mural only exists in photographs that his assistant took.
2. 2. Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park (1947): This piece addresses three major historical aspects of Mexican history: the conquest, the Porfiriato dictatorship, and the revolution of 1910. It also includes more than a dozen historical figures, including Frida Kahlo.
3. 3. Detroit Industry, North Wall (1928): This iconic part of the Detroit Industry Murals includes Frida Kahlo wearing a red blouse while distributing weapons for the revolution.

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