The Big Man and the Little Woman - Part Two
When Diego Rivera came back to Mexico in 1920, the ferocious revolution that had ripped huge swathes of destruction through the country was over. Power was now wielded by brown-skinned Mexicans and no longer by white ones. The revolution had seen to that.
Rivera was hired by the new Mexican Minister of Education Jose Vascencelos to use his art to educate Mexicans about their past. Rivera went to work.
He painted huge murals whose elements Edward Lucie Smith points out, "were taken from the Cubists, from Gauguin, Le Douanier Rousseau and perhaps most of all from 15th century Italian fresco paintings."
By his work and his energy Rivera became Mexico's most well-known painters. He, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Siqueros became Mexico's three greatest muralists. Yet Rivera was also a communist who strangely enough did work for Americans in the U.S. itself. In doing this he made the art fof the mural well known outside Mexico.
He did a mural in Rockefeller Centre in New York City. Yet here the energetic Nelson Rockefeller, later governor of New York State, ordered the mural destroyed after Rivera refused to take out a figure that looked like V.I. Lenin, the father of the Russian Revolution.
Though a communist, Rivera clashed with the Mexican Communist party and the communist rulers of the Soviet Union, who demanded total obedience to the communist party line.
In the 1930's, Rivera urged the progressive president of Mexico, Lazaro Cardenas, to allow the exiled Leon Trotsky to come to Mexico. After this happened, communists were outraged. "My parents hated Trotskyites," a former communist told months ago. Trotsky had helped create the Russian Revolution but later clashed with the Soviet leader Josef Stalin. Stalin kicked Trotsky out of the Soviet Union.
Rivera was thrown out of the Communist Party and was only allowed to rejoin the party after many years and making many apologies. Maeanwhile Frida Kahlo was seen mainly as Rivera's consort who tagged along with Rivera as they travelled around the world. He and sometimes she had love affairs outside their marriage.
Detroit to-day is a bankrupt city, a dour symbol of the U.S.'s Rust Belt. "40 per cent of its street lights were blown out," a former resident of Detroit told me. "I saw this in a magazine ad." Yet in the 1930's the city was a booming centre of the auto industry. Here, Rivera painted a famous mural for the Detroit Institute of Art. It still exists to-day.
Meanwhile Frida struggled. When she was in her teens, she was travelling on a bus that was crushed by a train. A pipe rammed through her body. She survived but she never recovered from this terrible injury. She underwent many operations. Out of this suffering, she created art.
Kahlo turned to the Mexican 'retablos' as her models. These pictures gave thanks to God or holy figures for saving the person who had been in danger.
"Both Frida's paintings and the retablos," writes Hayden Herrera, "record the facts of physical distress in detail without squeamishness." The narrative of the retablos, Herrera says must be accurate, legible and dramatic. "The retablo is both a visual receipt, a thank you note and a hedge against furture dangers."
As Edward Lucie Smith points out, Kahlo was influenced also by the paintings and portraits of Hermenegildo Bustos, a 19th century Mexican artist.
At the time, Kahlo was seen as a minor artist who painted pictures about her disabilities, health problems and suffering. Rivera on the other hand, was classified as a great painter who dealt with big male themes, like politics, class struggle and Mexican history.
Kahlo died in 1954, Rivera in 1957. He was seen quite rightly as one of Mexico's greatest artists. Kahlo was forgotten and was banished from art history by most art chroniclers.
Yet then came two great changes.
( To be continued ).
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