Diego Rivera – A Mexican Painter and Muralist

Diego Rivera, a well-known Mexican painter, was born on December 8, 1886. When he was 10 years old, he went on to study art in Mexico City at the Academy of San Carlos. The governor of State of Veracruz, Teodoro A. Dehesa Mendez, supported Rivera to go on with his schoolwork in Europe.

In 1907, he originally had schooling in Madrid, Spain with Eduardo Chicharro. Then he went to Paris, France to work with the vast crowd of artists in Montparnasse, chiefly at La Ruche. This is where Rivera’s buddy named Amedeo Modigliani created a portrait of him in 1914.

During those times, Paris was going through the start of cubism in paintings. Some of the renowned painters of such art movement were Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Rivera passionately welcomed this new art school from 1913 until 1917. Sometime in 1917, Rivera moved to Post-Impressionism that has simple shapes and huge bits of bright colours, the paintings of Paul Cezanne being his inspiration. Rivera’s paintings started to draw notice and he showed them at a number of exhibitions.

Rivera married Frida Kahlo, also a Mexican painter, in August 1929 in spite of the objection of Kahlo’s mother. During the last month of the same year, Rivera was commissioned to create murals in Cuernavaca in the Palacio de Cortes. He travelled to a lot of countries and showed his artworks. Being acclaimed internationally because of his paintings definitely gave pride to the Mexican flag. On November 24, 1957, Rivera died at 70 years old.