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Rivera Biography: Rivera the CubistDiego returned to Paris in mid 1910 and stayed until 1920. At last his work began to undergo major shifts. He was totally immersed in Cubist art by 1913. Pablo Picasso, the inventor of Cubism, went to Rivera, not the other way around, as most people would surmise. Picasso recognized Rivera's innate understanding of the Cubist theories on the canvases Diego was producing during this period. They became best friends and worked together for over four years. The mathematical rules Rivera had learned at the San Carlos Academy transformed him into one of the world's most acknowledged great Cubists. As Diego's fame grew as an artist so did his ego. He became an outrageous braggart, spinning ever increasingly fantastic tales about his cannibalism and his heroic feats in faraway Mexico. "Diego was a man of the emotions," Ehrenburg, the famous Russian writer, would tell about him in later memoirs, "and if sometimes Rivera carried to absurdity the principles he cherished, it was only because the engine was powerful and there were no brakes." Rivera, with wounded feelings, accused Picasso of stealing his own Cubist inventions, and in the year 1917, left Cubism behind forever. He said he found it too restrictive of free expression. He did paint extraordinary Cubist pieces such as his most noted masterpiece, Zapatista Landscape (The Guerrilla).
During his European years, he moved back and forth from Spain to Paris and Angeline became his common-law wife with whom he had a baby boy, Diego, Jr. born in August 1916, who died fourteen months later from the influenza, living alone with Angeline, without proper food and medicine. It seems that Diego had taken up with another Russian émigré artist, Vorobieff-Stebelska, nicknamed Marvena, while Angeline was in the hospital giving birth. As if that were not enough of an insult to tragic Angeline, this new mistress also gave Diego a baby girl, Marika, but he would never claim this child as his own. He returned to Angeline, yet it seemed an empty gesture on his part. Through all of this personal mayhem, Diego's painting underwent another major shift and he returned to a more naturalistic form of painting with his discovery of Cezanne and Rousseau.
 The Mathematician 1918
 Portrait of Jean Cocteau 1918
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