Diego Rivera – Biography, Spouse, Children, Death, Other Facts

Diego Rivera is a Mexican muralist and painter who is not only considered one of the major artists of the 20th century, but also one of the founding fathers of the Mexican muralist movement. Rivera painted murals in several cities around the world, including New York. Chapingo, San Francisco, Detroit and Cuernavaca. Here’s everything you need to know about the life and times of the greatest 20th century artist of all time.

Diego Rivera – Biography

Rivera’s full name is Diego María de laConcepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera and Barrientos Acosta and Rodriguez was born in Guanajuato, Mexico on December 8, 1886, to María del Pilar Barrientos and Diego Rivera Acosta. He had a twin named Carlos, who died when he was two years old.

His parents noticed his interest in drawing and painting a year after the death of his twin brother; they caught him drawing on the wall, but rather than scolding or discouraging him, they encouraged him by installing canvases and blackboards on the walls of the house. At the age of ten, Diego Rivera was enrolled in the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico City. One of his earliest influences was an artist named José Posada, who ran a print shop near his school.

He will then travel to Europe to deepen his art studies under the sponsorship of Teodoro A. Dehesa Méndez, then Governor of Veracruz. In Europe, Rivera’s first stop was Madrid, Spain, where he studied under Eduardo Chicharro. He then traveled to Paris, France, where he lived and worked with great artists such as Ilya Ehrenburg, Amedeo Modigliani and his wife, Jeanne Hébuterne, Chaim Soutine, etc.

Diego Rivera began as a cubist painter but history and the course of events quickly changed his work; he wanted Mexican political ideology as well as the life of the native to be reflected in his paintings. Renaissance frescoes there.

Upon his return to Mexico, he launched his career as a muralist, with funding from the Mexican government, he made several murals on the country’s history and the presence of people on the walls of public buildings. in 1922 he completed his first murals on the walls of the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria in Mexico City.

His paintings have traveled beyond Mexico City and found their way to other places like Chapingo, San Francisco, Detroit, Cuernavaca and even New York. One of his Man at the Crossroads paintings in the RCA Building in New York City, which featured a portrait of Russian communist Vladimir Lenin, sparked much controversy and would later be arrested and destroyed by the notorious Rockefeller family. In the 1930s he slowed down on his murals and concentrated on other paintings due to the lack of major mural jobs.

His wife and children

Diego Rivera has been married four times in his lifetime. His first marriage was to Russian-born artist Angelina Beloff, who did most of her work in Mexico. The couple married in 1911 and divorced in 1921 after ten years together. A year after his divorce from Beloff, he married for the second time, this time to model and novelist Guadalupe Marín. Their marriage lasted until 1929; later that year, Rivera married Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

Kahlo and Diego divorced in 1939, ten years after their marriage, but would reunite the following year and remarried. They remained married until Frida’s death in 1954. A year after Frida’s death, Rivera married for the fourth time; to Emma Hurtado, they remained married until Diego’s death in 1957.

Rivera had four children (three daughters and a son) from his four marriages. He had two of his children with Guadalupe, one with Bellof and one with the Russian-born painter Marie Vorobieff. The names of his children are Marika Rivera, Ruth Rivera Marín, Diego Rivera and Guadalupe Rivera Marín.

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Death and other facts

By the time of Frida’s death, Rivera’s health had deteriorated greatly; he was diagnosed with cancer and had to be taken abroad for treatment, but his health deteriorated further. On November 24, 1957, he died in Mexico City of heart failure at the age of 71.

However, Diego Rivera is said to have Converso roots; he was an atheist. One of his murals: Dreams of a Sunday at the Alameda depicts Ignacio Ramírez holding a sign with the inscription “God does not exist”.

The Rivera childhood home is now a museum in Mexico.