8.Diego Rivera - murals
Kenneth G. Hay
Professor Emeritus of Contemporary Art Practice, The University of Leeds,
UK

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“Self Portrait”, (1949). Tempera on linen, 31.4 x 25.1 cm (Coll. Burt B. Holmes)
Aged 63, he made four self-portraits - one in chalk, wo watercolours and one tempera painting. The
tempera painting is the result of severe self-scrutiny: the artist’s face is lined with wrinkles
and the heavy-lidded eyes have a sad expression.

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Juan O’Gorman, “Frida Kahlo House, Mexico”

Built with money from the San Francisco projects, Rivera built adjoining house-studios for himself
and Kahlo in the San Angel section of Mexico City, designed by the modernist architect Juan
O’Gorman. A fence of local cacti forms the boundary and contrasts with the stark modernism of the
man-made structures.

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“La Era” (1904), oil on canvas 100 x 114.6 cm, Guanajuato, Museo Diego Rivera

The influence of his teacher, José Maria Velasco is evident in Rivera’s depiction of a man
preparing a team of horses on the vast plain at the foot of volcano Popocatapeeetl. Like Velasco,
Rivera devoted his energies to capturing the specific tonalities and atmosphere of a typical
Mexican landscape.

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“Spanish Landscape: Toledo” (1913), oil on Canvas, 89 x110 cm. Coll. Guadalupe Rivera dew Iturbe

1913 marked Rivera’s transition to Cubism, primarily through his study of El Greco and secondarily
through his assimilation of some elements from Cézanne. During his Cubist period,(1913-17) he
produced c. 200 paintings. The Toledo Landscape was exhibited in Paris at the Bernheim-Jeune
Gallery.

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“Zapatista Landscape - The Guerrilla” (1915), oil on canvas, 144 x 123 cm. Mexico City, Museo
Nacional de Arte
Painted in Paris in the summer of 1915 during the bloodiest battles of the Revolution in Mexico.
Emiliano Zapata is represented in a contemporary Cubist idiom, in front of a landscape of the
valley of Mexico.

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Anfiteatro Bolivár, Mexico City, “Creation” (1922-3). Encaustic and gold leaf
Escuela Nacional Preparatoria

Rivera’s first mural in Mexico was commissioned by José Vasconcelos, recently appointed Minister of
education under the Revolutionary government of President Alvaro Obregón - within 6 months of
Rivera’s return from Europe. It launched the Minister’s plan for a publicly visible art programme
as a complement to his newly centralized national education policy. The classical design, symbolic
imagery, magnified figure scxale and vivid colour seems to have pleased the Minister and he gave
other commissions to Rivera. The theme and style bridges native indigenous traditions with Rivera’s
Cubist/Modernist training, and the moral imperatives of Judeao-Christian religion with the
intellectual standards of Hellenic classiciism. Vasconcelos also wanted to replace the previous
19th-century mural by Juan Cordero extolling the “Triumph of Science and Labour over Ignorance and
Sloth”, which had been couched in the 19th-century positivist terms of Dictator Diaz’s era.As it
stands the painting is a major exampke of rationalised Art Nouveau, or Art Deco as it has come to
be called. On the Left: Emanations of the Spirit of Woman (Wisdom Faith Hope Charity- Theological
values; Comedy, Song, Music, Dance; In the centre Primal Energy/Light; Emergent Man centre base. To
the right: Science, Continence, Strength, Justice, Prudence, Tragedy, Tradition, Erotic Poetry,
Knowledge, Fable (Emanations of the Spirit of Man); Man

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Secretería de Educación Publica, Mexico City, “Embrace & Peasants” (March-July 1923),

fresco mixed with nopal juice, 4.78 x 1.83m and 4.78 x 2.47m
Frescos on the patio walls and stairwells of the Escuela Nacionál Preparatoria were the crucible of
the Mural Renaissance which were followed immediately by these ones in the Ministry of Education
building, a block and a half away. Rivera manoeuvered himself to the overall command position of
all the building’s decorative programme and caused ructions with the Artist’s Union and fellow
artists. Single-handedly his work overshadowed all he other mural work in Mexico City, effectively
forcing other artists to seek work elsewhere. Rivera painted 116 frescos there, representing a
synoptic view of the Mexican Nation. They have come to embody the same position for Mexican Art as
Masaccio’s Brancacci Chapel in Florence, which defined the new Reniasssance style. They revived
fresco painting world-wide, and their socially concerned themes, in their emphasis on inigenous
American cultural values,  set the agenda for mural painting world-wide for decades to come.
Vasconcelos’ vision was for a renewed national cultural education. The Ministry was the
intellectual, moral and cultural heart of the new social order created by the Revolution. After
Vasaconcelos, the new Minister, Puig Casauranc remained persuaded of the superiority of Rivera’s
scheme and the other artists were dismissed.  Two other artists, with Rivera, formed the core of
the Mexican Mural Movement: David Siquieros and José Clemente Orozco. Rivera’s mural represents a
cosmography of modern Mexico, pesenting the life of th Mexican people in several allegorical
series, based on their work, struggles for social improvement, their achievements, and their
popular festivals.. Over their development, Rivera developed his own blend of Mexican vernacular,
an amalgam of contemporary realism and Mexican popular consciousness that moved beyond the precepts
of the project’s original patron towads a Marxist/socialist interpretation of national life wholly
concerned with Native Mexican culture.
The Court of Labour - surrounding the smaller of two courtyards, 18 main panels unified by the
theme of Labour (Rivera + substantial help from Xavier Guerrero)- celebrating agricultural,
industrial and handicraft economies characteristic of Mexico’s various regions; The prominence
given to the depiction of Tehuantepec women of a matriarchal Indian society makes clear his belief
in the necessity to revise traditional (White/westerm) social standards/hierarchies.  On the West
facing wall depict the occupations f Mexico’s industries (mining, farming, pottery) and contain
explicit political content: The supression of miners by outside interests (the mines were generally
foreign owned) by ecvoking the popular imagery of the Via Crucis. The third panel, here, depicts
the embrace f a farmer and a worker - an allegorical representation of the Marxist theory of mutual
proletarian interest and the potential power of their alliance. The final six panels, facing North
present scenes from the vast highland regions of Northern and central Mexico - its human
occupations, social conditions and “redemptive actions”In the upper level of the Court of Labour,
twenty motifs symbolize the intellectual, scientific and professional aspects of work, painted in
grisaille, to simulate an architectural frieze.  In the third level, 21 frescos are the thematic
culmination of Rivera’s symboilic programme, celebrating the fraternity of the Revolutionary
workers and peasants, symbolizing the arts, sciences, husbandry, native dances and horesmanship.

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“Distributing Arms” (c Nov. 1928), Secretaría de Edución Pública, Mexico City, Court of Fiestas

Fresco, 2.56 x 3.58 cm Third Level
The decorations cover the first and third levels of the courtyard. 24 main frescos of which four
are painted by other artists. The series theme is the popular festivals of the Mexican people, both
religious and secular which Rivera saw as communal celebrations combining votive and festive
elements whereby the spirit of the ritualized social existence of the Ancient Mexicans was
preserved.His aim was to integrate these rituals into a contemporary, redefined, proletarian
Mexican culture.The nine panels of the South wall celebrate the festivals of the peasant farmers,
the corn harvest, and the Day of the Dead;  3 panels in the centre celebrate the restoration of the
Indian communal lands (the ejidos) by the Constitution of 1917. On the west wall city festivals
(the Burning of Judases, Friday of Sorrows on the Canal at Sta Anita) bracket a four part frieze
depicting May Day in the city, uniting workers and farmers. (The largest space devoted to a single
theme), To the North Rivear painted just 5 murals, the otherfour were painted by Jean Charlot and
Amado de la Cueva, artist assistants to Rivera until late 1924. The central panel of the North Wall
again represents a large gathering: Market Place, clearly showing Rivara;s mastery in the portrayal
of details of peasant life, costume, expression, incident, and unflattering portrayals of the
‘;enemies of the people’
The Second Floor depicts escutcheons of the States of Mexic painted by Charlot under Rivera;s
supervision, and the Third floor contains two major cycles” The Corrido of the Agrarian Revolution”
(a popular Mexican song) and the “Corrido of the Proletarian Revolution” as Mexican peasants and
workers unite to forge the New Society. The image, above, includes portraits of Frida Kahlo, whom
Rivera had just recently re-married, David Alfaro Siquieros and Tina Modotti.  Other panels depict
scenes from Revolutionary struggle, the triumph of Revolutionary struggle over Capitalism, the
peasant leader Zapata and idealistic portrayals of the Russian revolution (Rivera was there from
1927-8).The scenes of Capitalist greedily increasing their wealth includes portraits of John D.
Rockerfeller and J.P Morgan

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Chapel, Universidad Autónima de Chapingo, “The Liberated Earth with Natural Forces controlled
by Man (1926-27) (end Wall)

Fresco 6.92 x 5.89 m
“in this chapel…Diego Rivera shaped the agrarian ideal of the Mexican revolution.”
The university was established in the 1920s as the National Agricultural School. Rivera’s murals
are in the Chapel and the administrative building foyer, corridor and stairwell.
14 principal and 27 subsidiary themes constitute a scholastically reasoned curriculum of
dialectical materialism, aimed at eradicating people’s memory of past subservience and
backwardness, and substituting images that present marxist revolutionary doctrines and advanced
technology as the assured pathway to social and economic emancipation.  Functioning like a
catechism, the chapel programme offers inspiration and guidance to a new generation of Mexican farm
workers and agricultural planners, exhorting them to uphold a modern and nationally constructive,
self-respecting way f life based on the credo, “Exploitation of the land not of Man”. The panels on
the  left depict successive stages in the transformation of society through “social Revolution”; On
the Right are depicted the parallel changes that take place in nature from seedling to flower in a
sequence called “Natural Evolution” - implying that the Social chgange follows naturally from the
laws of Nature. The Social Revolutionary panels depict: The Birth of Class Consciousness, Formation
of a Revolutionary Leadership, and Reactionary Forces. Scenes of struggle involve scenes of
uprisings, death and eventual triumph with monumental hands in the tympana exorting revolutionary
struggle; The Natural Evolution sequence depicts the people’s historical memory, buried martyrs
(Zapata and Montaño) whose blood fertilises the soil;  The second phase of the sequence depicts in
metaphorical terms, the earth’;s fiery underground and the emergence of man as unspoiled
expressions of the natural anthropological order. The themes represent nature’s awakening and are
followed by further symbols and portrayals of the process of evolution on two levels (inception and
growth of life - both plant and human) (Germination, Maturation, The Abundant Earth, while around
the windows appear phallic symbols and the fruits of harvest. The end wall ends with The Liberated
Earth and Natural Forces Controlled by Man representing the harmony between man and nature once
both are liberated from the tyranny of selfish interests.

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Universidad Autónima de Chapingo, Administration Building, “Good Government” (detail) (1924)

Fresco 2.98 x 9.46 m
The theme derives from Lorenzetti’s frescos in Siena, which Rivera saw in his tour of Italy in
1921. The Bad government depicts a despoiled coastal landcape under siege from tanks and
battleships, an illusion to foreign intervention; Good Government (above) depicts a scene of a
thriving industrial harbour (perhaps near the oil fields of Tampico); The final panel depicts the
alliance of campesino and industrial worker in creating a healthy society based on productive
labour.

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Chapel, Universidad Autónima de Chapingo, “Formation of Revolutionary Leadership” (1926-27)

Fresco 3.54 x 5.55 m

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Chapel, Universidad Autónima de Chapingo, “Subterranean Forces” (1926-27)

Fresco, 3.54 x 5.55 m

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Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, “History of Mexico: From the Conquest to the Future 1929-30, South &
West Walls.

Fresco, South & West walls, Stairway; 7.49 8.85m; 8.59 x 12.87m.
The frescoes represent: “The full tide of his genius” and the high point in his mastery of this
reinvented medium”.
Situated in two closely related areas of the central part of the magisterial building that occupies
the east side of the capital’s grandiose main plaza. Commissioned in 1929 during the 2-year interim
presidency of Emilio Portes Gill (Former President Plutarcho Elias Calles actually held the reins
of power). The seat of Mexico’s executive power since 1821. Before that for c. 300 years it was the
headquarters and residency of Cortés and from1550 of the Viceroy of New Spain. The subject is the
History of Mexico from the fall of Teotihuacán (c AD 900) to the beginning of the Presidency of
Lázaro Cárdenas in 1935. It is one of the most complex visual displays of historical material on a
near human-scale in the History of Art. (inviting comparison with Michelangelo’s Sistine Ceiling,
Trajan’s Column or the Bayeux Tapestry). Mexico’s History is organised in 2 parts: From the
Conquest to the Future on the Main entrance Stairway, and “From Pre-Hispanic Civilzation to the
Conquest”, in the covered gallery surrounding the central patio on the second floor. It was
executed in three phases: 1929-30: the stairway’s main and right walls; 1935: Left side wall
completed; 1943-51: eleven inter-doorway panels in the patio corridor extended the programme
further back into Mexico’s ancient past.
South Wall (Left): “Mexico Today and Tomorrow” (1935); West Wall (right): “From the Conquest to
1930.”
The subject of the South Wall is “Mexico Today and Tomorrow”.. The crowded montage follows a
rational part-to-part plan, however confusing it may seem to the eye from a distance.It proceeds
roughly following an ‘s’ curve beginning with the scene of contemporary Mexican campesinos,
teachers and students, devotees of the Church, workers, labourers, Marxist union members ridiculing
other doctrines being preached in the University classroom. In the centre, four areas divided by
the pipelines of power, isolate the roots of social evei: foreign capitalism, the three-fold
reactionary forces of Mexico(military, police, ecclesiastical); corrupt journalism; and high
society. Above all is the armed uprising against the existing social ordering downtown Mexico City.
At the very top, Karl Marx points to an ideal landscape and exhorts an alliance of worker, soldier
and campesino to abolish property and class divisions, and to form a new society.

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Palacio Nacional, Mexico City, “History of Mexico: From the Conquest to the Future 1929-30,
West(left) & North Walls.

West & North Walls (8.59 x 12.87 and 7.49 x 8.85 m)
The stairway represents Mexico’s national development in the 100 years following independence,
beginning with an allegorical representation of the ancient life and religion of Mexico.
In the first scene, Quetzalcóatl (The Plume4d Serpent) beneficient to Man holds court, instructing
his votaries; At the right, creative activities of Aztec life are depicted: music, ceremonial
dancing, agriculture, weaving, stone-carving. Pottery making and painting.To the left, a Knight of
the Order of Eagles demands tribute from a file of heavily burdened porters. The scene is pointed
out by a plebian Indian who protests to his fellows.. At the lower left is a scene of open battle
between ruled and ruling forces (evidence of aboriginal class struggle). At upper right,
Quetzalcóatl departs towards the East on a feathered serpent. At the crown of the arch a half-sun
bearing a face appears. The inverted head and erupting volcano to the left are symbolic of the
destruction of the Pre-Spanish world.
On the main wall of the stairway is a 5-part historical pageant of events connected in space and
time, designed to be read both horizontally and vertically. In the centre is the Eagle, symbol of
Mexico, holding the Aztec symbol of war. At the mid-point of the wall, the ferocious conflicts
between Indians and Cortés’s Conquistadores is presented. The topmost area of the stairway is
described by five rounded pictorial areas, four of them painted to represent themes from major
periods between Independence (1921) and 1930, when the mural was finished.The outermost panels
depict the invasions of Mexico by foreign powers, while flanking panels depict the Age of Reform
and the era of Porfirio Díaz. The central arched space is a symbolic montage of historical
personalities from the other four periods. (Whilst painting this series, Rivera had also accepted
the commissions for the USA (2 in San Francisco, One in Detroit, two in NY), a never to be
completed fresco in the Rockerfeller Centre, and a series of 21 moveable panels at the New Workers
School.  The US experience led him to an ever more international Marxist-Leninist perspective on
historical progress.

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“Disembarcation of the Spanish at Veracruz” (1951), Mexico City Palacio Nacional, Patio Corridor

Fresco, 4.92 x 5.27m
The nine panel sections around the Patio Corridor and two introductory panels, each have a
grisaille below     s representing Tenochtilán, the capital of 16th-century Aztec culture and
earlier pre-Columbian civilization to the north, east, south and west of the city in the Valley of
Mexico. The last shows the arrival of Cortés, depicted as suffering from syphilis. The two
introductory panels describe the cultural and agricultural achievements with which Mexico has
benefitted the World.
Overall, the two fresco cycles unify the departure of Quetzalcóatl with the arrival of Marx - the
dissolution of the old world and the formation of the New, all in harmony with the native
aboriginal Mexican culture.

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Palacio de Cortés, Cuernavcaca: “The Battle of the Aztecs and the Spaniards, (1930) West and North
Walls
A gift to the people of Cuernavaca and the State of Morelos from the late Dwight Morrow, conceived
during the last term of Morrow’s term as US Ambassador in Mexico (Sept 1927-1930). The Ambassador
wished to celebrate his liking of the people and his attachment to Cuernavaca, his home in Mexico.
He died shortly after its completion.
Morrow’s careful diplomacy won the confidence of Mexican President Plutarco Elias Calles and was
successful in resolving tense US/Mexican relations after the Revolution as well as heal the divide
between Mexico and the Vatican. The fee of $12,000 was the largets by far that Rivera had received.

Fresco, CuernavacaRivera was simultaneously working on the Palacio Nacional frescos and had also
been made Head of the Academy di San Carlos. Rivera’s revolutionary standpoint had not gone
unnoticed in the US where critics were hostile to the US involvement with a ‘Communist” artist. The
one sticking point between Rivera and Morrow however was the ‘hard faces; Rivera used to depict
priests in the fresco. Morrow tried to get Rivera to paint at least one kindly priest, and Rivera
resisted.In the end he left vague and unfinished the face of one truly kindly 16th century
Franciscan Friar (Toribio de Benevente, called Motolinia (the ragged one)).(next to the Loggia’s
entrance doorway). Rivera at the time had been expelled from the Communist Party, but did not want
to be seen to be too close to Morrow, a friend of J.P.Morgan and US Capital.
The frescos cover three walls of an outdoor, second-floor loggia facing ~Eastwards, and represent
the History of Cuernavaca and Morelos from the Spanish Conquestin 1521 to the agrarian revolution
of Emiliano Zapata in 1911.
Rivera saw this regional history as parallel to that of Mexico as a whole on which he was
simultaneously working on the central wall of the Palacio Nacional and he freely excerpted details
from the one to use in the other. The 8-part programme is arranged chronologically, beginning in
the North and moving across the west and South walls.
In April 1521, Cortés led an expedition to Cuernavaca with 300 Spanish footsoldiers and horsemen,
supported by his Tlaxcalan and Texcocan allies, preparatory to his attack on the Aztec capital. The
battle of Cuernavaca is the subject of the first theme on the North Wall (Far right). Across the
doorway, Spaniards and Aztecs are shown firing at each oter: to the right, a Spanish officer orders
two Tlaxcalans to move up a cannon; To the left, Tlaxcalans engage the Aztecs at close quarters,
while one of the defenders, dressed is a the Tiger/Jaguar Knight, attempts to stab an armoured
Conquistador. Over the dooray is a pyramid on which a human (Spanidh) sacrifice takes place.
On the West wall the conflict continues with the Aztec Eagle Knight battling a mounted Spaniard,
surrounded by a melée of fighting Indians, while above, a group of Spanish horsemen charge a rank
of Aztec men. The colour of the Aztecs standards and battle dress contrasts with the metallic
armour of the Spaniards, contrasting their military and cultural differences.  The second theme
represents the beginnings of the operation against Cuernavaca as Spanish cross into the village
through the branches of trees felled across a deep barranca (ravine) (All the bridges having been
destroyed). Subsequent panels show Cortés taking inventory of the captured gold, lands, captives
and building his palace: depicted in terms of the The ‘reparimiento’ system (whereby tribute in
produce and services is exacted from the native Indians in return for religious instruction and
material care, as wards of the Spanish Crown) Above this, Cortés’ country palace, the building
which houses the frescos, is depicted: Indian workers lift heavy blocks of masonry up a scaffolding
while stone craftsmen carve capitals.  Following scenes depict the plantation of sugar (Cortés
imported sugar cane from Santo Domingo and established a sugar refinery east of Cuernavaca, whilst
a cruel plantation owner reclines in a hammock, being served drinks by native women. A statue of
the Virgin of Guadelupe stands in a niche above his head.. The New Religion on the South Wall
depicts Rivera;s interpretation of the role the Church following the Conquest. Motolinia teaches
the Scriptures to a respectful group of Indians while other Friars (Franciscan and Dominaca)
depicted as cynical and greedy, receive tribute from a local tribe and their chief. Rivera shows
that oth the purpose and the effect of the New Religion was exploitation. The altruistic motives of
the humane priest, prepares the Indians to submit to exploitation more docilely by offering an
illusory reward in Heaven. Over the end-wall doorway is an Inquisition scene, showing women burning
at the stake, placed opposite the human sacrifice scene on the North Wall., suggesting that the new
religion also engages in such sacrifices.  Left of te doorway, scenes depicting the conditions of
the Indians in the three centuries following Spanish colonialism in Mexico - Campesinos, hanging
from gallows while their families grieve below, Others leave their villages following the abolition
of the ejido by Diaz. The figure of Zapata provides the climax not only to the scene but to the
entire fresco series.

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“Allegory of California”, (1931) Pacific Stock Exchange, Luncheon Club, San Francisco, stairway,
10-11th floor. (43.82 square m.)
Rivera met Californian sculptor, Ralph Stackpole in Paris in in the 1920s and again in Mexico in
1926. Stackpole returned to California excited by Rivera’s murals at Chapingo, and, after five
years of negotiations, secured the commission for this mural and the San Francisco Art Institute.
It depicts the bountiful human and natural resources of California, brought to fruition by North
American inventiveness, industry and adventurism.California is represented by a mature woman
(Tennis star Helen Wills Moody), whose hands gather up the fruits of the earth, surrounded by
symbols of , husbandry, enterprise, technological invention, entrepreneurship, harvesting forests
and minerals before the Pacific horizon.

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San Francisco Art Institute
The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City, Fresco, 5.68 x 9.91m (April-June 1931)
The coordinated activities of planner and builders, both above and below ground are seen through
the scaffold that supports a fresco painter (Rivera himself) and his assistants. Behind, towers a
monumental figure of an engineer-worker, symbol of the new economy. The triangular pediment
recalled Italian Renaissance panels such as Cimabue and Giotto’s Enthroned Madonnas in the Uffizzi
which he saw in 1920-21. The wall is conceived as a tryptych, further subdivided into 8 parts, as
with the murals of Masaccio and Masolino in the Brancacci Chapel, Florence.A further Renaissance
quotation is the floor level vanishing point (echoing Masaccio’s Trinity Madonna in Sta Maria
Novella, Florence). The inclusion of Donor portraits as well as those of himself and his assistants
also echoes Renaissance paintings such as Botticelli’s “Adoration” with the Medici family members.
Revolutionary elements are sotto voce: a tiny hammer and sickle on the Worker’s hat and the
pressure gauge next to the piston pump, just approching red, warning of imminent revoulution..

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Detroit Institute of Arts, Garden Court, North Wall (May 1932-March 1933) Fresco

The Detroit Frescos are the most ambitious Rivera completed in the USA but also the most cohesive
aesthetically and thematically. It harks back to the Chapel at Chapingo and prefigures the
technological themes of the RCA mural.
Dr William Valentiner, Director of the Detroit Institute of Art’s Museum had met Rivera in San
Francisco while he was working on the Art Institute’;s fresco there and commissioned him to paint a
mural whose subject would celebrate Detroit’s history and Industry. Rivera strongly believed that
the best modern architecture, engineering and design was issuing from America’s industrial culture
and was happy to accept.Initially he planned to devote the two panels to the Ford car industry (The
Rouge Complex in Dearborn). Aided by Ford staff photographer, W.J.Stettler he spent a month in
Detroit in April1932 making sketches. The final contract for all 27 panels around the Courtyard was
signed in June and Rivera began work in July 1932.
The fresco begins on the East Wall where the origins of life and technology are represented by a
child in a plant bulb, with two plough-shares in the lower corners, flanked at either side by two
seated female nude figures holding wheat sheaves and fruit, representing the indigenous agriculture
of Michigan.
The North Wall, like the South Wall is devoted to three sets of images: the races that shape North
American culture and make up its work force, the automobile industry, and the other industries of
Detroit (medical, pharmaceutical, chemical). Figures representing the races hold the raw materials
Rivera felt were analogous to each. Between each pair of figures, enormous hands grasp materials
used in steel production. At the bottom are panels depicting scenes from the daily life of the
workers. The central panel at the top f the North Wall depicts figures representing the red and
black races holding iron ore and coal respectively; below are the geological strata from which
these materials are mined. In the far right panel a child is being vaccinated in a medical
laboratory surrounded by animals whose blood is used to make the serum and the scientists who turn
the serum into vaccine.. In the far left panel, gas bombs are being made and further contrasts
include a healthy embryo below the vaccination panel, and dead cells, poisoned by gas below the
bomb panel. The largest panel on the North Wall represents important operations in the production
and manufacture of the engine and transmission of the 1932 Ford V-8. In the upper centre, a blast
furnace is being tapped and a large ladle pours liquid steel into the open-hearth furnace.There
follows a detailed depiction of the various processes of car production - making moulds, mixing
sand for the molds, etc.. In the centre of the panel, flanked by two rows of giant spindles is the
assembly of the engine.. Below, small monochrome panels represent the steel making process,
including the workers taking a lunch break.. The workers in the foreground are portraits of
Rivera’s assistants and acquaintances, and a self portrait.

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“Detroit Industry”, South Wall, Detroit Institute of Arts, May 1932-March 1933, Fresco

In the central panel at the top the white and yellow races are represented, holding limestone and
sand respectively, below which are the geological strata of these materials.In the corner panels
are depicted: pharmaceuticals (left), commercial chemicals (right). The small panel shows a
surgical operation, Crystallized sulphur and potash. The major panel is devoted to production of
the automobile’s exterior, not arranged sequentially. Creation of the body parts begins at the
right - The foreman is a generalized portrait of Charles E. Sorenson, Head of Production at Rouge
and Head of Ford’s International operations in 1932. At th end of the assembly line, the finished
car is seen ready to be driven away. The small monochrome panels represent by-products of coke
being made into fertilizer, repairing machine parts and workers being paid from armoured trucks as
well as portraits of Dr William Valentiner and Edsel B. Ford (lower right) -the only two depicted
as not working.. The compression of space, the representation of simultaneous operations, and the
separation of forms into geometrical elements echo Picasso and Braque’s Cubism while the two
workers in motion echoes Futurism, subsequently used in cartoons. The rows of spindles echo
pre-Columbian, Aztec and Maya sculptures representing deities. Specific compositional forms were
adapted from Italian Renaissance - the Vaccination scene mimics a Nativity, and the use of Predelle
panels and portraits of contemporaries as well as the actual fresco technique itself are derived
from the Renaissance. The depiction of the Workers’ Day simulates Mediaeval pictographic calendars
and the carved Tympana of Christain Churches

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“Detroit Industry”, West Wall, Detroit Institute of Arts, May 1932-March 1933, Fresco

The West Wall depicts aviation and shipping. The central half face/half skull in grisaille,
symbolises the co-existence of life and death while the star represents hope for the future, but
also refers to the dual nature of humanity as natural and technological. On the same monochrome
panel, the city of Detroit and the port of the Rouge are shown o0pposite a rubber plantation. In
the centre, freighters, pleasure boats and fish glide through a representation of the Detroit River
and a South American river (Amazon?). Technology’s destructive and constructive aspects in the
aviation panel where both passenger and war planes are being assembled,, reinforced by two smaller
panels showing peaceful and preddatory birds.. Vertical panels on each side of the West Door
introduce the automobile industry: Power House No. 1 (the energy source for the Roge Complex)
-including a generalised portrait of Rivera as a worker and a composite figure of Henry Ford and
Thomas Edison. The panels emphasise the interdependence of Raw and Transformed power; and Labour
and Management, represented by a worker/mechanic on the left and the engineer manager on the right.

RockerfellerCentre 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
RCA Building mural, NY, , just before work was stopped in May 1933

(Destroyed 1934)
Radio Corporation of America, Rockerfeller Plaza, NY. The commission was Rivera’s fifth in the USA.
It led to the stormiest controversy of his career and none of the most notorious scandals in modern
art. The commission specified the futuristic theme of “Man at the Crossroads, Looking with Hope and
High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future”. Rivera then followed his application with
a detailed verbal description of his plan (to Abbey Aldrich Rockerfeller (Mrs John D. Rockerfeller)
who was then busy with the artistic and curatorial policies of the New MOMA with Alfred H. Barr’s
widow) plus drawings of the entire composition (which clearly included a Head of Lenin). The
sketches were approved by “Mr Rockerfeller” and Rivera began work in March 1933. All went well
until May 1933, when the head of Lenin appeared in the right section of the main wall.  Nelson
Rockerfeller who had assumed the role of intermediary between artist and Rockerfeller family
politely asked Rivera to replace this portrait with another. Rivera politely declined. On May 9th,
the mural was surrounded by guards and officers of the construction company seerved Rivera notice
that his commission was cancelled and gave him a cheque for the entire amount of his fee. On
February 10-11 1934 the mural, already 2/3rds finished, was destroyed with hammers.
The existing photographs reveal perhaps the most complete, integrated and masterful examples of all
Rivera’s work, unifying, human, scientific, technical and socio-political parts of the subject. It
clearly fulfills the explicit brief he was set - The only difference is between his and the
Rockerfeller’s ideology, For them, unlike for Rivera, Lenin was not a figure linked to the future
hopes of humanity. Rivera had been visibly impressed by the advances of US industrial production,
but for him the Capitalist management system was complete anathema to his alternate revolutionary
political solution.  Capitalism had led the world to the brink of economic collapse in the 1930s
and Europe was falling before Fascist military aggression. Rivera had become disillusioned with
Stalin’s policies by the time of his Soviet visit in 1927, so Lenin, the patriarch of unified,
successful, egalitarian, working-class action, exemplified by the October Revolution, alone
remained the sole beacon of revolutionary hope; and this was clearly not the same direction of
thinking as the Rockerfellers and the other co-partners involved in the construction and financing
of the RCA building.

Industry 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
New Workers School. New York. “Modern Industry” (1933) and “Mussolini”( 1933), private collection

“Modern Industry”: July-December 1933, fresco, 1.83 x 1.80 m
“Mussolini, July”: December 1933 fresco, 1.83 x 1.52 m.
Originally designed for the New Yor Workers’ School, then located in the fourth floor loft of a
storage building on N.14th St between 5th and 6th avenues. The are was the local rallying point for
workers’ demonstrations and the Union HQ for the garment industry. It was founded by Jay Lovestone,
leader of the Communist Party in the US, known as ‘The Opposition” because it opposed the
dictatorial policies of Stalin and the Comintern throughout the 1930s
The mural depicts key moments in US history from the beginnings of European colonization to the
present crises of Nazism and Fascism. 21 moveable frames summarize historical events/conditions by
depicting historical personnages and symbolic figures as motifs representing the struggles and
eventual victory of the proletariat and workers. The motifs follow his exhibition at MOMA, NY in
1931. Opposite t the group portraits of the Fathers of Marxism are portraits of the enemies- Hitler
and Mussolini, and the positive and negative sides of American history. 13 panels were destroyed by
fire in 1969, the others are in private collections in Mexico, venezuela and Sweden(Archiv for
Dekorativ Konst, Lund).

Palacio deBA 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
“Man, Controller of the Universe”, (1934), Mexico City, Museo de Bellas Artes, fresco 4.85 x11.45

mRivera askde the Mexican government for a wall on which to reproduce the RCA mural and was given a
west wall on the third level of the National Cultural Centre, making him the first artist to
receive this official recognition.
The other two levels of the foyer are the site of large scale works by José Clemente Orozco, David
Alfred Siquieros and Rufino Tamayo. The composition closely mirrors the lost RAC fresco. In both
the central space is occupied by a worker, controlling the machinery by lever and buttons. Two
great ellipses represent the microcosm of the world seen through the microscope, and the macrocosm,
te stellar universe as viewed through the cylindrical telescope above. Below, the earth sends forth
fruits from cultivated plants (showing Man’s intervention). To the right of the ellipses, Lenin
joins hands of several workers of different races. To Man’s right is a scene of debauchery among
the wealthy (Different to the NY original, Rivera has placed John D. Rockerfeller, and the
disease-forming cells of the ellipse nearby. Other changes include- The larger scale of both areas
adjacent to the magnifying lenses are larger and help restore the sense of a tryptych. To the left
of Man, workers of the world embrace socialism, while to the right the capitalist world,
accompanied by scnese of repression and war. Additional portraits include: Marx, Engesl, Trotsky,
Jay Lovestone and Bertram D. Wolfe behind a banner proclaiming the Ivth International, recently
formed by Communist opponents of the Soviet Party, then dominated by Stalin.Finally, to the left
Rivera packed in many seated figures gesturing and staring around the statue and machines,
anticipating the churning masses he had started work on on the Palacio Nacional, left unfinished
before his San Francisco trip in 1932, and to which he now returned in more aggressive
revolutionary mood.

H.Reforma 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
Hotel Reforma, Mexico City (Now Museo del Palcio de Bellas Artes), (1936) panels 1-3

Theme: A Burlesque of Mexican Folklore and Politics. Four vertical panels, two at each end of the
Hoel banquet hall.
Fresco, mounted n moveable steel frames; 3.89 x 2.11 metres each.
Between 1934 and 1939 Rivera returned to easel painting in the absence of new mural commissions.
The Hotel Reforma was built in ambitious Art Deco style in the heart of Mexico city’s night-life
quarter, not far from the National Art Museum. The murals were commissioned by the Pani family and
satarize four aspects of 19th-century and contemporary life: The Dictatorship, Dance of the
Huichilobos, Touristic and Folkloric Mexico, and Festival of Heujotzingo (Augustín Lorenzo). Almost
all the figures are caricatures that slyly ridicule, in Carneval fashion, some phase of Mexico’s
life, its myths, conventions, scared political figures and eccentric street personalities, American
tourists, and most pointedly national/international demagogues.The Patrons objected to the biting
representations of contemporary Mexican personalities and world figures ,a nd without consulting
Rivera, members of the Pani family doctored the ‘offensive’ images, which led to a court case and
the eventual vindication of the artist to whom unprecedented damages were awarded. The panels were
sold and eventually bought by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes.

H.Reforma2.jpg 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
“A Burlesque of Mexican Folklore and Politics (The Dictatorship, Dance of the Huichilobos,
Touristic and Folkloric Mexico and the Festival of Huejotzingo” (1936) Panel 4.
Mexico City, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes; Fresco, 3.89 x 2.11 m

SF City College 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
“Pan-American Unity”, City College of San Francisco, (1940), panels 1-3

Fresco on moveable steel frames; 10 interconnected panels, 6.74 x 22.5 m., .now installed on a
slightly convex rectangular wall.
1.“The Creative Genius of the South Growing from Religious Fervour and a Native Talent for Plastic
Expression”
2. “Elements from Past and Present”
3. The Plastification of the Creative Power of the Northern Mechanism by Union with the Plastic
Tradition of the South.
In 1939 the Golden Gate International Exhibition opened on a man-made island in San Francisco Bay.
Intended to showcase Old Master art from all over the world for two years, the sponsors pulled out
after one year - fearful of losing their collections (valued at over $40,000,000). To replace the
second year’s programme, architect Timothy Pfleuger, then designing the new City College Campus,
organised an International Art Exhibition of artists at work at the Fair, for spectators to watch
daily, to replace the Old Masters. Resultant works would then go to the College Campus as major
adornment.
Rivera painted this, his largest mural in the US. Pfleuger had met Rivera in San Francisco at the
Stock Exchange; Rivera arrived in the summer of 1940, in hiiding, shortly after the attack on
Trotsky’s life, then a guest in his house by an agent of Stalin. He agreed to work in public
provided that he could express what he wished for his subject, within the theme of good will
between the two countries of Mexico/US. He had tempered his earlier critical stance in the light of
the Stalinist purges, and the Nazi-Soviet pact which had led to the Second World War. In the face
of the growing Nazi threat, Rivera increasingly expressed himself in terms of Pan-American
solidarity. The theme expresses the need for union among the Americas and Americans, North and
Latin South, depicted in both their ancient and modern aspects, against a geographical backdrop of
the San Francisco Bay area and the Valley of Mexico. Constructive, technical and artistic
achievements of each region, with portraits of celebrated personalities are arranged in graded
historical sequence, against a sweeping landscape in aerial perspective. The union is symbolized in
the centre by a composite figure: half Coatlicue (Aztec god of earth and Death) and half a giant
industrial stamping press. Before this giant figure, two full-length figures based on Canadian
wood-sculptor and engineer Dudley Carter are shown carving a giant Rocky Mountain ram from a
redwood timber (Symbol of City College of SF). The upper section forms a continuous panorama,
whereas the lower register consists of separately ‘framed’ sections depicting epochs from the
history and culture of both societies.. The lower register lampoons contemporary political
personalities.

SF City College2.jpg 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
“Pan-American Unity”, City College of San Francisco, (1940), panels 4-5

4. “Trends of Creative Effort in the United States and the Rise of Woman in Various Fields of
Creative Endeavour through her use of the Power of Manmade Machinery”.
Left, bottom: Stalin Hitler, Mussolini, Charlie Chaplin, Jack Oakie as ‘Benzini Napaloni’ The Great
Dictator, Edward G. Robinson
Left Top: Alcatraz island, Treasure Island, Woman architect (Mary Anthony, forester and botanist),
Architect Otto Deichman, Frank Lloyd Wright, Emma Lou Packard (Rivera;s chief assistant), Daughter
of Mona Hoffman.
5. “The Creative Culture of the Northj Developing from the Necessity of Making Life Possible in New
and Empty Land”
Right top: Mount Lassen, prospectors, wagon trains oil derricks; Mona Hoffman’s cat, Henry Ford,
Thomas A. Edison, Albert P.Ryder, Samuel F.B.Morse, Embroiderers, figurehead carver, maritime
artist, carver of cigar store Indian, Robert Fulton,

Medicine 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
Instituto Nacional de Cardiología, Mexico City (1943-44)

Fresco, 6 x 4.05 m each; Tialpan, Universidad Ibero-Armenicana, Auditorium.
A ‘Historical synthesis’ of the study of human heart and its clinical care from Pre-Christian era
in China, Egypt, Greece and Rome to the mid-20th-century: A series of portraits of outstanding
international contributors past and present.  Each vertical panel presents a ‘curtain’ of bust-like
portraits of famous figures in period dress with attributes symbolic of their contributions. All
are identified by name and date, and organised by discipline ascending from the front in roughly
chronological order. Apart from the scene top left of the execution by fire of Spanish
anatomis/theologian Miguel Servet, there is no other narrative sequence. The aim is to remind
current medical staff of the debt they owe their forerunners in cardiology.
The Grisailles represent medicine in China, Egypt, herbal stimulants and Yoloxochitl in
pre-Christian Mexico.

H.del_Prado.jpg 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
Hotel Del Prado, Mexico City, (1947-48)
“Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda”, 15m

Fresco 4.8 x 15m, Hotel del Prado, Mexico City.
A summation of Mexican History and the artists’ own involvement in it as an uninterrupted stream of
reflective consciousness. It is a kind of valedictory, in which Rivera reviews his experiences as a
Mexican artist and his humanist social credo. It is the least systematically doctrinaire and the
most autobiographical of his works.
The extended horizontal (c four x 1) is divided into three roughly equivalent parts and three
horizontal planes of depth.The narrative moves left to right from the 19th-century colonial past to
the early 20th-century on the right.
The autobiographical aspect is represented by the artist as a young boy, (left of centre) holding
the hand of the Burlesque of Vanity “Dead Catrina” from Posada’s caricature (he stands beside her).
His central position is emphasised by the downward curling shapes of tree branches, clouds and
balloons and the flames of Revolution on the right. Although most figures are presented facing the
spectator, the sense of a promenade dominates.
In Art History, Courbet’s “Studio: Or a real allegory of my life” is perhaps the closest precursor.
Along the foreground, the everyday Mexicans of the lower classes of Diaz’s era are depicted as
abandoned or outcast in contrast to their class-conscious superiors above. Rivera’s daughter has
said that these represent scenes the young Rivera witnessed at first hand in his youth.  The
political theme is to underscore the interrelationship of cause and effect in the divided social
classes of Mexican Society which led to the 1910 Revolution. Characters depicted include: the
urchin pickpocket, the hustling newsboy, the old people lost in past memories, the ladies of
fashion, (referencing the flamboyant style of Diaz’s wife Carmen Romero Rubio de Diaz), the fruit
and tortilla vendors, the taunting prostitute, the brutish policeman,and the little dog snarling at
him.
Behind him, Frida Kahlo with the Chinese symbol of eternity, and to her right Lupe Marin (Rivera’s
first wife) and their whole family.
Four background portraits are larger than the rest: Juarez, Diaz, Zapata, Madero; Supplementing the
figures in the congregation are portraits of José Marti (19th-century spokesman for Cuban
independence) and Ignacio Ramirez (19th-century scholar and champion of the separation of Church
and State, who declared in a lecture in 1836: “God does not exist”. This figure originally had a
placard with this slogan, but its presence caused outrage, particularly from Catholic students who
defaced the mural and stoned Rivera’s house. He later removed the words, but left the date and the
place of Ramirez’ declaration. Four elongated thematic lines traverse the elongated composition
from left to right: the primary historical figures from colonial times through the Revolution at
the top, figures symbolizing the constituencies that supported these leaders below them; the
historical personalities who contributed to the formation of national consciousness and saw the
moral value of social responsibility; and at the bottom, the fundamental world of Mexican and by
extension, all human society, maqnifesting the condition of the poor, the outcast and the
exploited, and the general populace as ‘lumpen proletariat’

H.de_la_Raza.jpg 0340B461 Ken's G5HD_01 BC85B848:
 Hospital de la Raza, Mexico City, (1953)

“The History of Medicine in Mexico: The People’s Demand for Better Health” (1953)
Fresco, c. 7.4 x 10.8m, Mexico City Hospital La Raza.
The hospital is the foremost hospital dedicated to the care of Mexico’s indigenous people. Rivera’s
mural is a visual homily and celebration of medical science, newly organised as an up-to-date and
free service to the Mexican people.. The theme is divided into two parts: Ethnological aspects of
native, pre-Columbian medicine; and Modern medical science and technology including portraits of
prominent Mexican physicians as well as hospital assistants.
The key figure is a two dimensional representation of Tlazoltéotl or Ixcuina - goddess of repulsive
things, one of the major Aztec deities. Her purview is removal of, not attachment to, filth as well
as in some interpretations, the guardianship of childbirth. She is flanked by two tree-like forms
at the junctions of the main wall with the main wall. These can be seen as ‘arteries’ forming a
‘vascular’ frame for the mural, which is divided into three parts both horizontally and vertically.
In the centre, is painted a tablet with 84 varieties of medicinal plants, with names in Náhuati,
under which is a life/death mask flanked by two serpents, comprising undulating mosaic strips along
the base of the composition. Nthe centre sky are peregrination footprints with the sun and moon.
The right hand section depicts Pre-Columbian medicine before Izcuitl (intercessor for human
illness) To the left, instruments and technologies of modern medicine. The changeover from private
to public medical services is commemmorated by two facing groups of contemporary figures- the
poor,elderly and infirm are informed by doctors that they no longer need to pay for medical care.
Behind them the former medical profiteers are rebuffed and sour-faced. The figure of Tlazoltéotl
derives from a 16-th century manuscript The Codex B orbonicus, in the Assemblée National, Paris
From 1946, the first year of President Miguel Alemán’s presidency, Mexican public infrastructure
expanded greatly - trams, communication, subways, suburban development, public services and schools
including art and archeological museums and conservation of cultural heritage.It also marked the
beginnings of a controversy between indigenism and modernism in art that saw a move towards
international modernist taste, represented by the semi-abstract work of Rufino Tamayo, in
opposition to Rivera’s preferred direction. He had been re-admitted to the Communist Party after
Stalin’s demise and continued to affirm his support for the Mexican Revolutionary ideals, adopted
30 years before: (indigenous, anti-capitalist, anti-cimperialist and popular).