Diego Rivera Turns 125

Friday, December 09, 2011

MEXICAN ARTIST DIEGO RIVERA
CELEBRATES 125TH BIRTHDAY !!!!!

    Diego Rivera was the guy who changed everything when it came to Art in the 20th Century. El Señor Rivera was born in Guanajuato , Mexico in 1886 and in 1907 moved to Europe to study with the masters . Spending the bulk of his time in Paris , Rivera came to know the works of Cezanne , Matisse and Renoir and through this came to develop his own style . When Diego discovered Frescoes after studying the Renaissance , he knew what his medium would be in order to speak to the people of Mexico through art . Fresco is a style of painting that uses fresh plaster as its medium and Diego thought that it was the best way to communicate his ideas , his values and his radicalism to his beloved people .
 
If you did not know , Diego Rivera was a stone cold radical who made NO apologies for his Marxist beliefs and he used his Frescoes to show how workers of the time lived . In fact in 1933 , The Rockefeller family commissioned Mr. Rivera to paint something in the lobby of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center and famously fought with him once they saw that he was including Lenin in the artwork installation . What was originally asked for was something that would show the social , industrial and scientific possibilities of the then still new 20th Century but what was depicted was the May Day Demonstrations with Red flags and Lenin leading from the front .

When the Rockefeller family saw this depiction , they went CRAZY and demanded that he remove the portrait , when he did not , they fired him and destroyed the painting .The best part of all of this is , when he left , he used the Rockefeller money to create a fresco for the Independent Labor Movement who had Lenin as their Central Figure . So there it is for all of us to see and learn from , Be your own person , do what makes you happy EVEN if you get fired and above ALL ELSE think for yourself . By the Way , did we mention that Diego was married to the great Frida Kahlo ?????
  
¿¿ HAVE YOU HEARD ??