The Big Man and the Little Woman - Part One

     The Big Man and The Little Woman - Part One



     He was a huge rumpled Mexican artist whose feuds, energies, appetites and art works, dwarfed most other artists. She was a small, crippled woman whose great subjects were herself - her pains and her sufferings.
      They both made history and became famous but at different times. Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo married each other, divorced and then married each other again.
    By 1960 both had passed away. Yet Kahlo's art career or recognition in the art world had barely begun.
     Rivera was older than Frida. He was born in 1886 the son of a school teacher. Rivera studied art in Mexico City and then won  a scholarship to study art in  Spain and to Paris.
     In Paris he studied the art of the day including Impressionism, Cubism and so on. Then he went to Italy to see the great Renaissance painters like Michelangelo, Giotto and many others.
    When he returned to Mexico in 1920 he started to paint giant murals that caused a sensation. A civil war and revolution had ripped through Mexico for ten years leaving many dead and large parts of the country in ruins. Now the new Mexican government launched a whole new educational system of which mural painting was a part. The murals that Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueros painted, breathed new life into art and art in Latin America.
     "Mexicans are not a gay race," said another great painter Rufino Tamayo, who was at one time Rivera's student and then his rival. "Mexicans are tragic because of their long history of foreign domination."
     This is true. Mexico came into the modern world by conquest . In the early 1500's, the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes invaded the Aztec empire and brutally smashed it. Now Spain ruled an empire made up of millions of First Nations people. Yet about 300 years later, Mexicans rose in revolt against their Spanish overlords. After lots of violence they won their freedom like many other Spanish colonies in South America.
     Yet Mexico's problems weren't over. Mexico's growing powerful neighbour the United States of America cast envious eyes at the relatively empty lands in northern Mexico. "From the halls of Montezuma," goes one of the lines in the hymn of the United States' Marines. And in the late 1840's, U.S. troops invaded Mexico and Mexico City where once the mighty first nations emperor Montezuma had ruled.
    The U.S. won the war with Mexico and siezed huge chunks of the country. Texas, California and many other now western states were once part of Mexico. After 1848 they belonged to the United States. "We never gave them to America," a Mexican government official complained in 1971 to a Canadian tourist. "The U.S. siezed them."
     Soon after this, french troops invaded Mexico but were driven out. From about 1870 to 1910, Mexico lived in peace under a dictatorship. Yet in 1910 a revolution erupted as first nations and other  people of colour wanted the power and privileges mostly held by white
 people.
      By 1920 the Mexican Revolution was over though violence sometimes broke out again.
     Then Mexico went through a period of growth, peace and some prosperity. Ruled by the PRI or Party of Institutionalized Revolution, Mexico underwent an economic boom. A new middle class appeared to enjoy the fruits of prosperity. Yet the old time politicians, and their cronies still held on to the important reins of power. This period lasted from the 1940's to the 1970's.
      The U.S. of course wielded great power in Mexico. Canadian nationalists like George Grant, Jim Laxer, Walter Gordon,  prime minister John Diefenbaker, Mel Watkins and later David Orchard, have lamented U.S. power in Canada. Yet in the end, this led to Canadian peace, order and prosperity. In Mexico's case it often led to war and poverty.
      "Poor Mexico," one Mexican official is supposed to have said. "So far from God, so close to the United States of America." Even to-day violence still plagues Mexico. At this time, the Mexican government ruled again by the PRI is at war with powerful drug dealers. This war has already killed 40,000 Mexicans.
     It was against this sometimes violent backdrop that Rivera and Kahlo painted their great works.