Rivera Biography: The Great Mexican Muralist

By 1921, Diego was weary of Paris and Angeline. He longed to go home. The Mexican Revolution was over and Alvaro Obregon, the greatest general of the war's victors had been elected President of Mexico.

New educational programs swept in with this newly enlightened government. Rivera, along with other well known Mexican artists, were invited to paint massive wall murals throughout Mexico for the grand purpose of uniting all its multi-race citizens into a Country of One. Mexico was determined never again to suffer the inferiority complex of a colonized nation.

Before he sailed for Mexico, Diego took a detour through Italy to learn everything he could about fresco painting. This Italian trip was a good investment of his time because the next gun to be fired in Mexico was not for the Revolution of Politics. It was for the Revolution of Art. The gunshot to be heard would signal the start of the great mural race and Diego was now set to be at the head of the pack.

When Diego arrived home in June, 1921, thousands of new schools were being built, millions of books were being distributed and the illiteracy rate dropped by thirty percent within four years. This new free-spirited liberal government, however, needed a more effective media than books in which to sell their Glorious New Nation's story. After all those guerilla victories, the vast majority of their ethnic population still could not read or write.

Into Mexican history walks a man by the name of Jose Vasconcelos, the newly appointed Minister of Education. He is a visionary, like none seen before in his country. In the early 20th Century, film was a phenomenon on the horizon of discovery but Vasconcelos had the futuristic insight to realize that "a picture is worth a thousand words." Diego Rivera is bent on becoming his new best friend. The rest is history as we can look back in hindsight and know why the great Mural Renaissance of Mexico was born.

Rivera's first public mural was the Creation, painted in two stages of time.

It is critical for anyone who wants to know his art to take a close look at this mural. It is not his best by far but more than any other work it reveals a staggering change in his visual imagery. The sides and top of the arch were painted first, based on a universal life theme given to him by Vasconcelos. Diego was not happy with it, though he would never admit it.

He took a break from the painting so he could take a trip into the Yucatan wilderness. He became captivated by the primal beauty of the organic nature he experienced there. He walked out of that jungle with a pair-of-eyes that would rarely perceive images in a realistic 3rd Dimension again. He returned to paint the center niche of the mural.

The limited space of this biography will not allow us to talk about all the artistic elements behind this amazing transformation. You just have to look at it and you will instantly think that two different artists must have painted on this wall.

Diego Rivera became the "King of the Hill" of Mexican iconography, and deservedly so. Everyone watched and studied Diego as he became highly skilled in this ancient art and cleverly invented many of his own techniques to make the paint behave on the plastered walls the way he wanted it to.

Today, one can become exhausted just trying to view the thousands of square feet of magnificent imagery that he inexhaustibly painted throughout his beloved country. We show you now a mural that took him over four years to complete and is universally believed to be his finest Mexican Mural. From a 21st Century mind-set, it is hard to imagine that any artist would have the endurance to accomplish such a feat. His one-hundred and twenty-eight panels at the Ministry of Education depict the history of all the Mesoamerican and European peoples, struggling to build a utopian future, summiting in a new heroic image of El Grande Mexico.

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