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Rivera Biography: Fresco Artist of the United StatesBy the end of 1929, the world had turned upside down. With the crash of the Wall Street Market, countries with capitalistic economies collapsed everywhere. Marx had always predicted that socialism would be born and thrive best within a highly developed industrial nation. For centuries, inequities had existed between the wealth and well-being of the few versus the poverty and ill-being of the masses. Marx theorized that in a fully developed nation, built on the principles of equality, this grievous contradiction would, finally, be so blatantly exposed, that it would drive its citizens to the development of a socialist utopia. Diego believed the United States was the country in which these idealist dreams were about to come true. He wanted to be a part of this great world event. Amongst enormous media controversy, in 1930, Rivera, a very vocal proponent of Communism, was invited to paint a major mural in one of the bulwarks of American capitalism, the new San Francisco Stock Exchange Luncheon Club. Diego and Frida traveled to California where he painted California, based on a legend of a Black Amazon warrior queen, Califia, associated with the mythical "Island of California." Diego metamorphosed her into Mother Earth, a goddess of abundance with her giant hands gathering up the rich plenty of the State of California. This mural is, without doubt, the most gorgeous art piece he ever produced. America was in love with him.
From June to October, Diego returned to Mexico to continue working on the National Palace murals, but more importantly, he was preparing a show for the Museum Of Modern Art in New York City. His was the second one-man show to be invited to this new museum, Matisse having been the first. On November 13, 1931, Diego and Frida, sailed into New York harbor on board the SS Morro Castle. Diego was amazed at the modern architectural wonders of the soaring New York skyscrapers. After seeing California, almost immune to the depression, he was equally appalled at the despair he saw on the faces of the men, women and children standing in the breadlines and soup kitchens of New York City. His MOMA show opened on December 23, 1931, and was a great success. More than 57 thousand visitors a month came to view his art. It had an even more popular response than Matisse. Diego loved the industrial magnificence of the United States and spent the next ten years painting his salute to it. Word quickly spread among the titans of American industry and he was asked by Henry Ford's son, Edsel, to paint a multiple paneled mural in the Detroit Institute of Art of the now famously depicted Detroit Industry Production and Manufacture of Engine and Transmission. The showing opened in March, 1933 to become an American triumph.
After the opening of the Detroit murals, Diego and Frida headed to New York City. Diego had been commissioned to paint a mural in the RCA building in the new prestigious Rockefeller Center, to begin painting on March 7, 1933. The name chosen by the architects of this complex was Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future. This daunting assignment might have made other artists decline but not, Rivera, the greatest muralist. Detailed sketches were presented by Diego and approved by the building's committee. Rivera was working industriously on the mural into April when a New York World Telegram journalist reported that Diego had inserted a heroically depicted giant head of the communist, Vladimir Lenin, in the center of the mural and had depicted the capitalist, John D. Rockefeller, martini-in-hand, on the marginal sidelines. The uproar that ensued between the upholders of capitalism and the upholders of free artistic expression can still be heard in the societies of money and art to this day. Nelson Rockefeller was asked to intervene and he reasoned with Diego, and then demanded him, to replace the face on the image. Rivera, artistically always true to his personal beliefs, refused to do so. The Rockefellers paid him his full commission and removed him from the building. Months later, when the mural was jack hammered off the walls, the painter, John Sloan, declared the act "a premeditated murder of art." In the end, when the painting was reproduced in Mexico City it was criticized as one of his worst art pieces. It could not have been worth losing his title as the grandest illusionist of them all. His great murals were now in his past.
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