Rivera Biography: Art Academy Student

In truth, he was quite spoiled, dropped out of all three of his parents’ chosen schools and demanded to be enrolled in the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts at the age of ten. He started out at the finest young adult man’s art school in Mexico as a frog eyed, fat boy in short pants and with all kinds of disgusting little slimy things boys like to carry around, crawling out of his pockets. He ended up, six years later, graduating at the top of his class, destined to become San Carlos’s most world renowned artist. This is the stuff that legends are made of and it’s all fact. Diego’s artistic mastery was the only one consistent real truth in all his life.

The rigid traditional perspective drawing instructed at San Carlos would turn Diego into the finest draftsman among all of his 20th Century peers. It drives his success of the tromp l’oeil in his mural work. The deftness of his pure linear draftsmanship lies beneath all his seemingly simplistic folk art paintings. He was most strictly instructed in the Golden Section, the ancient pseudo-scientific theory regarding mathematical rules of proportion. Forever, Rivera’s adherence to rules in art would distinguish his work from the Post Impressionist artists. Diego owes much of his achievement to this rigorous and rational training he received during those six years at the academy.

Sketch of Head of a Woman, 1898 done at age 12 at school

The Making of a Fresco, a trompe l'oeil within a trompe l'oeil, San Francisco Art Institute 1931

The most consequential wisdom garnered from San Carlos, that would forever mark his art, was the knowledge of the greatness of the pre-conquest Indian civilizations who lived and ruled in Mexico centuries before Cortez stepped foot onto their land. Rivera painted a lot of easel art to pay for his avid collecting of Pre-Columbian art. In his later easel paintings he even worked on multiples of six at the same time, claiming it was a skill he had learned from watching the mass-production on Detroit’s auto assembly lines.

Nude with Calla Lilies 1944

Peasants 1947

Flower Seller 1942

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