The San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present one of the largest exhibitions of Diego Rivera’s works, the great Mexican painter of the twentieth century. Rivera is well-known for the social-political engagement in his works and reintroduction of fresco painting into modern art. Diego Rivera’s America will show more than 150 Rivera’s paintings, frescoes, and drawings. Moreover, this exhibition also will set three galleries devoted to large-scale film projections of Rivera’s famous murals in Mexico and the U.S. The exhibition will display Rivera’s works which span over two decades, from the 1920s to the mid-1940s, the years when he build a new vision for North America, that “informed by his travels in Mexico and the United States”.
Both Rivera and her wife, Frida Kahlo are great Mexican artists. Rivera established the mural movement in their country, while Kahlo created vibrant colored self-portraits that explore the themes of identity, the human body, and death. “Rivera was one of the most aesthetically, socially, and politically ambitious artists of the 20th century,” said James Oles, the guest curator. “He was deeply concerned with transforming society and shaping identity—Mexican identity, of course, but also American identity, in the broadest sense of the term.”
Rivera’s iconic works, such as The Corn Grinder (1926), Dance in Tehuantepec (1928), Flower Carrier (1935), and Portrait of Lupe Marín (1938), will be shown in this exhibition, along together with other works that have not been seen publicly.
Flower Carrier (1935) depicts a man wearing white clothes and a yellow sombrero on his head, struggling with his arms and legs to carry an oversized basket of flowers that is strapped to his back. A woman behind him, probably the peasant’s wife, help when he was trying to rise on his feet. Rivera successfully portrays the contradiction, between the beauty of flowers and the huge burden of the worker. This painting suggests the heavy burden that is borne by workers in a modern and capitalistic world, while only the capital owners and consumers can enjoy the beauty of commodities. The bold, bright, and vibrant colors of this painting also easily captivate the eyes of the audience.
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The culmination of the exhibition is Rivera’s mural, entitled The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on the Continent—or commonly known as Pan American Unity. It is a huge painting (22 feet high by 74 feet wide or 6.7 meters x 22.6 meters) that consists of 10 fresco panels. Rivera said that this mural tells “the fusion between the great past of the Latin American lands, as it is deeply rooted in the soil, and the high mechanical developments of the United States”.
San Fransisco is one of the significant cities in Rivera’s life. It was the first place Rivera painted murals in the U.S. Rivera’s works have also influenced artists and muralists across the Bay Area. It was also the city where Rivera and Kahlo remarried in 1940, after a year of divorce.
Through his works, Rivera reimagined Mexican national identity that embraced their legacy and the industrial age in the U.S., resulting in unity, rather than division, in America. Diego Rivera’s works also have shown that art is a powerful weapon to achieve greater social equality and justice.
Diego Rivera’s America will be on view at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA): from July 16, 2022 – to January 2, 2023.