Painter, Marxist and husband of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera is known as much for his political activism as for his monumental mural paintings. This book explores his visionary and unique depictions of a modern Mexico, combining communist passion, pre-Columbian heritage and European modernist influences.

Rebel with a cause

A revolutionary spirit of modern art

Diego Rivera (1886-1957) is a towering figure on the art historical stage. With strong political principles and a turbulent love story, he was at once husband and champion of Frida Kahlo, defender and enemy of Stalin's Soviet Union, and liberator and traitor of Leon Trotsky.
Rivera's paintings, vividly coloured, graphic and often monumental, are as passionate and politically charged as the artist's personal biography. Fusing European influences, such as Cubism, with a socialist ideology and an exaltation of Mexico's popular and indigenous heritage, he created a new iconography for the history of art and for his country. He became one of the most important figures of the Mexican mural movement and gained international recognition for his mural paintings on public buildings in which he presented a utopian, yet accessible, vision of a post-revolutionary Mexico. In 1931, Rivera was the subject of the second monographic exhibition in MoMA's history.
This book examines the unique combination of influences and ideologies that made Rivera a unique and universal painter, linked to the particularly turbulent history of early twentieth-century Mexico, and concerned, in turn, with issues such as revolution and class inequality, which remain burning issues today.

About the author

Andrea Kettenmannstudied art history in Göttingen and Hamburg before joining the Department of Art History at the University of Hamburg. She is the author of numerous publications on Frida Kahloy and has contributed to various exhibitions and catalogues. She works as an art historian in Mexico City, where she has lived for many years.

Publisher: Taschen