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¡¡Asesinos!!
1924This article by Diego Rivera denounces the “reactionary” agents of Delahuertismo who were the true architects of the conspiracy to infiltrate Masonic lodges at the beginning of 1924 in order to murder the governor of Yucatan, Felipe Carrillo [...]ICAA Record ID: 763275 -
¡¡Fíjate, Trabajador!!
1924This document is a didactic-political text directed toward the working class organized around identification of its enemies. These include the fake socialist parties (equated with the Italian fascists). And also the intellectuals unable to understand [...]ICAA Record ID: 763293 -
¡Que viva Trotsky!
1986This was the headline of the supplement—dedicated to the muralist on the centenary of his birth—that published a document dated December 19, 1929 in which Diego Rivera explained “My Expulsion from the PCM.” The text discusses his reasons and [...]ICAA Record ID: 754283 -
[¿Quiénes levantaran el monumento a Posada?=Who will raise the monument to Posada?]
1930This issue contains more than 400 engravings by José Guadalupe Posada, with a preface by Diego Rivera, in which he redefines the engraver as a “worker,” “warrior of leaflets,” the “greatest artist” produced by the people, and the [...]ICAA Record ID: 757821 -
América en peligro de perecer! : El famoso pintor Diego Rivera profetiza la disgregación y la muerte de América si no corrige un yerro
1943To Diego Rivera, discrimination against Indians is the greatest collective crime of the descendants of the Spanish colonists on the continent. If this situation is not corrected, Latin America will be set on a path to extinction. In this essay, as [...]ICAA Record ID: 747263 -
Arquitectura y pintura mural
1934In this article written for The Architectural Forum, a New York City publication, in January 1934, the muralist Diego Rivera made public his point of view about the necessary link between architecture and painting. The purpose of the link was to [...]ICAA Record ID: 785796 -
Arte Antiguo Mexicano
1956Rivera claims that societal conditions influence a society’s cultural expression, and insists that making art is an integral part of the social fabric. Speaking from an essentially Marxist platform, he explains that art will disappear in future [...]ICAA Record ID: 780488 -
Arte puro, puros maricones
1934Choque [Shock], the publication of the Alianza de Trabajadores del Arte Plásticas (ATAP) [Alliance of Visual Arts Workers] sets forth the opinions of Diego Rivera regarding art for art’s sake, which he considers “sandez sentimental” [ [...]ICAA Record ID: 822465 -
Carta a Fernando Ocaranza
1935Bertram Wolf, Diego Rivera’s biographer, states that the period from the late 1930s through the early 1940s was a solitary, confusing time for the painter due to the fact that his name was appearing constantly in newspaper headlines as the [...]ICAA Record ID: 785801 -
Carta de Diego Rivera al Seminario de Cultura Mexicana
1943Diego Rivera writes a long letter to the Seminario de Cultura Mexicana [Mexican Cultural Seminary] in which he challenges the statements made by the Spanish writer José Bergamín about landscape painter José María Velasco and José Clemente Orozco [...]ICAA Record ID: 735531 -
Catorce preguntas a Diego Rivera al regreso de la U.R.S.S.
1956The Argentine art critic, Raquel Tibol, asked Diego Rivera 14 questions aimed at identifying his different impressions of the Soviet Union [today, in 1956,] as compared to 1927. The questions were focused on new art, the art market, and the disputes [...]ICAA Record ID: 735494 -
Clérigo-Stalinismo Versus Cultura y Verdad
1938Diego Rivera denounces the “sordid sabotage” that the French poet André Breton has been subjected to at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México: as an action driven by a network of intellectuals controlled by the Soviet GPU. He offers as [...]ICAA Record ID: 794683 -
De pintura y otras cosas que no lo son
1923Diego Rivera briefly reviews what he sees in the artists of the period and discusses the various trends in artistic expression in Mexico at the time, indicating his preference for murals with a nationalist theme. He claims that painters and the [...]ICAA Record ID: 735479 -
Dos años
1923Two years after returning from Europe, Diego Rivera finds that much has changed, especially as regards what is being taught at the Open-Air Schools, where he detects an “Impressionist” trend. He is subtle in his critique of various groups. Rivera [...]ICAA Record ID: 734410 -
Dynamic Detroit : an interpretation
1933Diego Rivera explains the meaning of the iconographic and formal plan of his Detroit Industry murals in the courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). He explains that he employed undulating lines as the unifying design element to represent [...]ICAA Record ID: 782055 -
Edward Weston and Tina Moddoti = Edward Weston y Tina Moddoti
1926Diego Rivera reaches out to photography, including it as one more technique within the field of plastic creation. In his view, it was photography that liberated painting from the need to express an objective reality. He also equates the technical [...]ICAA Record ID: 734189 -
El anfiteatro de la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria
1925Diego Rivera describes the liberties he took when painting his mural La Creación [Creation], which expressed man’s relationship with the elements as a means of telling the prime history of Mankind. Rivera explains how he adapted his work to the [...]ICAA Record ID: 732884 -
El Arte y el panamericanismo : América debe salvarse de perecer bajo los escombros del mundo grecolatino, esclavista, que se derrumba actualmente
1943Diego Rivera believed that art materialized when primitive communities began to show signs of humanity; pre-Columbian, African and European art are proof of this. Those ancestral works already contained all the elements needed to function as [...]ICAA Record ID: 747269 -
El Arte, base del Panamericanismo
1943To Diego Rivera, the crisis the world is going through leading up to World War II is a problem to be analyzed scientifically. The painter believes that Western culture is based on slavery, and presents a phenomenon that he calls “el cesarismo [...]ICAA Record ID: 747257 -
El Bloque Obrero y Campesino frente a la revuelta
1929Diego Rivera, the chairman of the Comité Ejecutivo del Bloque Obrero y Campesino Nacional (BOyC) [Executive Committee of the National Workers’ and Peasants’ Block], submits a request to El Machete to publish a statement on March 4, 1929. In the [...]ICAA Record ID: 776696 -
El dibujo infantil en el México actual / Children´s drawing in present day Mexico
1926Diego Rivera begins his article on how children draw in Mexico by saying that he hates the instruction provided by the Academy, which starts by teaching children how to draw illustrations, then sculpture, and finally the nude model. Rivera criticizes [...]ICAA Record ID: 734230 -
El estadio Olímpico universitario
1977Diego Rivera enumerates his reasons for believing that the Estadio Olímpico [Olympic Stadium] of the Ciudad Universitaria [UNAM Campus] is the most salient example of the struggle for Mexican independence. To construct such a building, the most [...]ICAA Record ID: 735515 -
El lío entre pintores y arquitectos : Serenando la contienda
1930This article summarizes the conflict between students at the Facultad de Arquitectura [School of Architecture] and those at the Escuela Central de Artes Plásticas [ECAP, Central School of Visual Arts] at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [...]ICAA Record ID: 754989 -
Entrevista con el pintor Diego Rivera
1921In this brief interview, Diego Rivera is asked what prompted his return to Mexico. He states that he is interested in studying the traditional art of Mexico as well as the ruins of the country’s amazing past in order to crystallize certain artistic [...]ICAA Record ID: 746976 -
Escultura : Talla Directa
1927Forma magazine conducted a survey on painting and sculpture. Based on the results, Diego Rivera wrote about the major differences among those who considered themselves to be sculptors, saying that all that a sculptor really needed was a quarry and a [...]ICAA Record ID: 734244 -
Francis Toor
1956On the occasion of Frances Toor’s death, Diego Rivera, who was a friend and collaborator of Toor’s, dedicated an article in remembrance of the fundamental role that the American writer and editor played in the dissemination of Mexican art, in [...]ICAA Record ID: 760390 -
Frida Kahlo y el arte mexicano
1943Diego Rivera lays the groundwork for his article about Frida Kahlo by tracing a path through the history of the founding cultures of the Pre-Hispanic and Spanish periods and the nineteenth-century. In his opinion, Mexico’s social evolution can be [...]ICAA Record ID: 735544 -
Hay crisis en la pintura mexicana? : Es absolutamente indudable que la situación revolucionaria, no sólo de México sino del mundo entero, entre 1910 y 1923 fue el factor determinante del auge de la pintura mexicana
1945Diego Rivera maintains that the crisis in Mexican painting is an invention. It may be a crisis invented by the literati so they will have a pretext for writing their books, or perhaps created by critics so they will have material to send to their [...]ICAA Record ID: 747275 -
Inédito de Rivera : Los artistas, siempre con el pueblo
1956In this interview, Diego Rivera begins by defining art and explaining its importance to society. In his opinion, “art is better in a society where there are no class divisions.” According to him, “art is able to stimulate very specific [...]ICAA Record ID: 780509 -
Insisto! Repite Diego : El pintor proporciona una serie de datos para demostrar que no ha mentido en el caso de Guatemala
1955In this article, Diego Rivera affirms that he does not know Alvarado Rubio, an employee of the Embassy of Guatemala during the regime of dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, and that it is from there that the lies published in Impacto begin. Rivera also [...]ICAA Record ID: 754400 -
Integración plástica en la cámara de distribución del agua del Lerma, tema medular : el agua origen de la vida en la tierra = Plastic Integration in the Lerma waters distribution chambers : theme : “Water” : origin of life on the earth
1952The Río Lerma embankment project gave Diego Rivera, as he acknowledges in this article, the chance to combine painting with sculpture by making both coexist under water, an environment that would endow his forms and figures with movement. This [...]ICAA Record ID: 760405 -
La Escuela Nacional de Agricultura en Chapingo
1925Diego Rivera painted two different murals at the National School of Agronomy in Chapingo [now named Universidad Autónoma Chapingo, located near the Mexico City airport]. One was in the school’s offices, where Rivera explains that he was able to [...]ICAA Record ID: 732898 -
La exposición de la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes
1921Diego Rivera discusses the exhibition at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, and subtly conveys his disappointment with the event. He believes it is a mistake to imitate what is being done in Europe. Rivera thinks it is dangerous to encourage a “ [...]ICAA Record ID: 735289 -
La inercia del gobierno da pie a un nuevo golpe reaccionario : Cuestión de vida o muerte
1924Diego Rivera, author of this essay, conducts a political analysis of the role that workers and peasants played as allies of the government in the struggle against the “reaction;” that is, a coup d’état carried out against the government that [...]ICAA Record ID: 764022 -
Las Pinturas Decorativas del Anfiteatro de la Preparatoria
1923Diego Rivera’s visual arts discourse echoes the ideas of José Vasconcelos in his mural La Creación [Creation], in which he expresses, within an abstract theme, a clear allusion to race through selected representative elements. These include the [...]ICAA Record ID: 734641 -
Lo que dice Diego Rivera
1930Diego Rivera states that he is completely within his rights to respond to statements made by students at the School of Architecture against him. In spite of the threats received from students, he has no intention of retracting or withdrawing a single [...]ICAA Record ID: 820682 -
Los ataques a las pinturas de Jorge Camarena como síntoma de anormalidad social
2006Diego Rivera believed that the whole world knew there were paintings in the churches and palaces of the Catholic popes and kings that displayed nudity in a more obvious manner than the figures painted by Jorge González Camarena at the Guardiola [...]ICAA Record ID: 823143 -
Los Judas
1949Diego Rivera champions the collective genius given to the Mexicans, which has been the source of hundreds of thousands of works, made by the individuals that make up the Mexican people. The temporary nature of this artwork has characterized it since [...]ICAA Record ID: 783837 -
Los nombres de las pulquerías / Names of pulquerias
1926Diego Rivera considered pulquería painting [illustrations in agave sap bars] to be an example of the kind of popular art which—in his opinion and the opinion of other painters—helped to distinguish and differentiate the new genre of Mexican art [...]ICAA Record ID: 735664 -
Los Patios de la Secretaría de Educación Pública
1925Diego Rivera addresses certain architectural issues that complicated the installation of his murals at the Ministry of Public Education building (SEP), obliging him to resort to geometric solutions on some of the floors. He provides a somewhat [...]ICAA Record ID: 732911 -
Los valores nuevos de la pintura mexicana
1930In this article, which was also published in El Ilustrado (August 1930), Diego Rivera predicted “an excellent future” for Isabel Villaseñor, the painter from Guadalajara. The article was devoted to new young artists, and Rivera described the [...]ICAA Record ID: 792927 -
Manifiesto a los Obreros y Campesinos de México
1930In his proclamation, Diego Rivera denounces that the stance of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) is classist. According to the muralist, UNAM closes ranks against any attack from the proletariat organizations that provide subsidies [...]ICAA Record ID: 820695 -
Mardonio Magaña
1948Diego Rivera writes a biography of Mardonio Magaña, who arrived in Mexico City at age 52. Magaña started to carve wood and stone while he worked as a waiter at La Casa del Artista, a branch establishment, part of the Escuela Nacional de Bellas [...]ICAA Record ID: 760397 -
Más letras antes del pan : Los clérigos stalinistas gepeuizantes y el caso del gran poeta André Bretón
1938Meant as a wakeup call for the Lázaro Cárdenas’ administration (1934-40) in Mexico, Diego Rivera launches an attack against the police intelligentsia, including some agents of the Soviet GPU that, in his judgment, had infiltrated the “ [...]ICAA Record ID: 794653 -
Mexican painting : pulquerías = La pintura de las pulquerías
1926Furthering his theories about popular art, and referring to the paintings on the walls of certain pulquerías [agave sap bars] in Mexico City, Diego Rivera once again discusses the art of the proletariat. He restates his contempt for bourgeois [...]ICAA Record ID: 734208 -
Mexican painting : the portrait = La pintura mexicana : el retrato
1926Diego Rivera had an ongoing interest in popular art, which he began referring to as “Mexican popular art,” moving on from the ideas expressed in the previous article on retablos (see "Los Retablos: verdadera actual y única expresión pictórica [...]ICAA Record ID: 734152 -
Nationalism and art
1933In the words of Diego Rivera, certain artists made use of the concepts of jingoism and patriotism in a manner that led to the creation of a completely bourgeois art form. He sees, as an example, the ghost of Nazism and the persecution of the Jews in [...]ICAA Record ID: 786563 -
Orozco y la tragedia de México
1949In this brief, moralizing article, Diego Rivera expresses his opinion about the art of José Clemente Orozco on the occasion of the latter’s death. In his painting, Orozco clearly defined the positives and negatives he saw in his country. And, he [...]ICAA Record ID: 735431 -
Papel de la Escuela al Aire Libre
1945In 1945 Diego Rivera wrote an article in which he looked back approvingly at the Open-Air Schools that were founded in the 1920s. He disagrees with David Alfaro Siqueiros (who attended one of them), and José Clemente Orozco, who spoke disdainfully [...]ICAA Record ID: 734263 -
Protesta : De los artistas revolucionarios de México
1928The poster “Protesta: De los Artistas Revolucionarios de México” [Mexican Revolutionary Artists: A Protest] shows the obviousness of the dispute between the students at the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes (ENBA) and the teachers and workers at [...]ICAA Record ID: 786608