“An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can’t feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn’t capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won’t put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn’t a great artist.”

Considered the greatest Mexican painter of the twentieth century, Diego Rivera had a profound effect on the international art world. Among his many contributions, Rivera is credited with the reintroduction of fresco painting into modern art and architecture. His radical political views and tempestuous romance with the painter Frieda Kahlo were then, and remain today, a source of public intrigue. In a series of visits to America, from 1930 to 1940, Rivera brought his unique vision to public spaces and galleries, enlightening and inspiring artists and laymen alike.

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886. He began to study painting at an early age and in 1907 moved to Europe. Spending most of the next fourteen years in Paris, Rivera encountered the works of such great masters as Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, and Matisse. Rivera was searching for a new form of painting, one that could express the complexities of his day and still reach a wide audience. It was not until he began to study the Renaissance frescoes of Italy that he found his medium. It was with a vision of the future of the fresco and with a strong belief in public art that Rivera returned to Mexico.

Frescoes are mural paintings done on fresh plaster. Using the fresco form in universities and other public buildings, Rivera was able to introduce his work into the everyday lives of the people. Rivera concerned himself primarily with the physical process of human development and the effects of technological progress. For him, the frescoes’ size and public accessibility was the perfect canvas on which to tackle the grand themes of the history and future of humanity. A life long Marxist, Rivera saw in this medium an antidote to the elite walls of galleries and museums. Throughout the twenties his fame grew with a number of large murals depicting scenes from Mexican history. His work appealed to the people’s interest in the history of technology and progress. The desire to understand progress was visible in the growing industrial societies of the 1930s, and Rivera saw the workers’ struggle as a symbol of the fragile political ground on which that capitalism trod.

In 1930, Rivera made the first of a series of trips that would alter the course of American painting. In November of that year, Rivera began work on his first two major American commissions: for the American Stock Exchange Luncheon Club and for the California School of Fine Arts. These two pieces firmly but subtly incorporated Rivera’s radical politics, while maintaining a sense of simple historicity. One of Rivera’s greatest gifts was his ability to condense a complex historical subject (such as the history of California’s natural resources) down to its most essential parts. For Rivera, the foundation of history could be seen in the working class, whose lives were spent by war and industry in the name of progress. In these first two commissions and all of the American murals to follow, Rivera would investigate the struggles of the working class.

In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, Rivera arrived in Detroit, where, at the behest of Henry Ford, he began a paean to the American worker on the walls of the Detroit Institute of Arts. Completed in 1933, the piece depicted industrial life in the United States, concentrating on the car plant workers of Detroit. Rivera’s radical politics and independent nature had begun to draw criticism during his early years in America. Though the fresco was the focus of much controversy, Edsel Ford, Henry’s son, defended the work and it remains today Rivera’s most significant painting in America. Rivera, however, did not fare nearly so well in his association with the Rockefellers in New York City.

In 1933 the Rockefellers commissioned Rivera to paint a mural for the lobby of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center. “Man at the Crossroads” was to depict the social, political, industrial, and scientific possibilities of the twentieth century. In the painting, Rivera included a scene of a giant May Day demonstration of workers marching with red banners. It was not the subject matter of the panel that inflamed the patrons, but the clear portrait of Lenin leading the demonstration. When Rivera refused to remove the portrait, he was ordered to stop and the painting was destroyed. That same year, Rivera used the money from the Rockefellers to create a mural for the Independent Labor Institute that had Lenin as its central figure.

Rivera remained a central force in the development of a national art in Mexico throughout his life. In 1957, at the age of seventy, Rivera died in Mexico City. Perhaps one his greatest legacies, however, was his impact on America’s conception of public art. In depicting scenes of American life on public buildings, Rivera provided the first inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s WPA program. Of the hundreds of American artists who would find work through the WPA, many continued on to address political concerns that had first been publicly presented by Rivera. Both his original painting style and the force of his ideas remain major influences on American painting.

Organizer for Lesson One

• Styrofoam fruit trays lined with burlap to make the panel less fragile (avoid using meat trays, which may harbor contamination)
• Paper clips
• Plaster (preferably fine jeweler’s plaster)
• Powdered tempera
• Very soft brushes
• Brown paper
• Charcoal
• 90-lb. watercolor paper
• Tracing paper
• A straight pin
• A sock filled with powdered charcoal
• Find books about Diego Rivera at your local library.
• Websites
  • http://www.riveramural.com/
  • http://www.artchive.com/artchive/ftptoc/rivera_ext.html
  • http://www.sos.state.mi.us/history/
    museum/explore/museums/hismus/1900-75/depressn/labnews2.html
  • http://www.arts-history.mx/museos/mu/mural2.html
  • http://www.pbs.org/fresco/activity.html
  • http://www.mcrel.org/standards/

Background for Activity One : What is (visual) Art?

1. Involve the students in a class discussion about visual art.
2. Ask students what they think art is, and write their responses on the board.
   • Read and discuss the following quote from visual artist Marcel Duchamp:
     “But before we go further, I want to clarify our understanding of the word ‘art’ – to be sure, without any attempt at a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.”
   • Marcel Duchamp placed a urinal on the floor and said that it was art.
   • Do you agree with him? Why/why not?
   • Do you think it is ever possible to truly define art? Why/why not?
3. Ask students what purpose art serves.
   • On a personal level
   • Community level
   • National level
4. Diego Rivera believed that art should play a role in empowering working people to understand their own histories. Do you agree with this?
5. Do you agree with Rivera’s statement that “art is essential for human life”? Why/why not?
6. Historically every group of people has produced art. Why do you think this is?

Background for Activity Two : Viewing a piece of art

1. Have students find several pictures of paintings that interest them. (Art books, Internet art museum sites, art magazines)
2. Write Hand, Heart and Eye on the board. These words will be used when looking at a selected painting:
   • Hand – (Physical) What are the physical elements of the painting? (i.e. what materials were used)
   • Heart – (Social) What meaning or ideas does the painting elicit?
   • Eye – (Psychological) What do you look at first? (What your eye does to decipher the visual elements.)
3. Pick several paintings to discuss using these elements.
4. Pair students together and have them repeat the process.

Background for Activity Three : Diego Rivera

1. Discuss how murals are usually found in public places, and how they generally tell a story.
2. Send students to the PBS American Masters site to gather information on Diego Rivera. (http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/rivera_d.html
3. Ask students to answer the following questions:
   • Where can Rivera’s work be found in the United States?
   • What kinds of stories did Rivera tell in his paintings?
   • Do you think Rivera’s painting, containing Lenin’s face, in the RCA building in Rockefeller Center should have been destroyed? Why/why not?

Activities

Activity One

Duration 3 – 50 min. sessions

Rivera’s Murals

1. Ask students to think of examples of famous murals (i.e. Sistine Chapel) and/or murals that might be in their community.
2. Discuss how Rivera didn’t want his art to be contained in museums and galleries. He wanted people to have open access to his work.
3. Divide the class into groups to research the events of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1940) and the United State’s Great Depression.
4. Each group, using a variety of sources, will gather information about these time periods.

The following site contains information about the Mexican Revolution: http://www.northcoast.com/~spdtom/rev.html

This site contains information about the Great Depression.

http://www.sos.state.mi.us/history/museum/explore/museums/hismus/1900-75/depressn/labnews2.html

5. After spending twelve years in Paris, Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921. The Mexican government was commissioning artists, Rivera included, to paint frescos for public buildings. The themes for these paintings included social and national themes, and religious motifs.
6. Find books with examples of Rivera’s Mexican murals in your local library. The following site contains Rivera’s Night of the Rich and A Dream of a Sunday in Alameda Park:

http://www.arts-history.mx/museos/mu/mural2.html

7. Use your research information from studying the Mexican Revolution to discuss how Rivera’s work reflected what was happening in Mexico during this period of time.
8. Rivera came to the United States to paint in 1930.
9. Visit the following sites to view some of Rivera’s work that he painted in the United States:

http://www.diegorivera.com/murals/mural4.html

http://www.diegorivera.com/murals/nwsny2.html

10. Discuss how the images in Rivera’s murals relate to what was happening in the United States during this time period.
11. Ask students to find a Rivera mural that interests them and create a short story based on the mural.

Activity Two

Duration 10 – 50min. sessions

Creating a class mural

1. Tell the class that they are going to create a class mural that will tell the story their current day lives in 21^st century United States.
2. Brainstorm a list of ideas to be included in the mural. (Suggested topics include what is happening in their everyday lives, popular culture, social issues, politics, environment, technology )
3. Have students choose one of the topics to illustrate.
4. Discuss the layout of the mural. (i.e. One single panel, a main panel with numerous side panels)
5. Directions for the actual making of a mural may be found on the PBS online Fresco website at the following location: http://www.pbs.org/fresco/activity.html (Click on the site and scroll to creating a fresco panel.)
6. Create the mural.

Assessment

Lesson One

Students will be evaluated on the overall quality of their story.

Lesson Two

Students will be evaluated on their participation in the class mural.

Extensions

Have students investigate what public artwork exists in their community. Students may also explore the existence of state and national public art works.

Organizers for Students

• Diego Rivera: Art as the Universal Language (pdf)

Grade Level

7 – 12

Subject Areas

Visual Arts; Language Arts; History

Objectives

In this lesson students will

• reflect on what (visual) art is and what it means to them.
• critique works of art.
• relate the themes of Rivera’s murals to the given time period.
• write a short story based on one of Rivera’s murals.
• create a class mural.

Standards

Arts

Understands and applies media, techniques, and processes related to the visual arts

• Understands what makes different art media, techniques, and processes effective (or ineffective) in communicating various ideas
• Understands how the communication of ideas relates to the media, techniques, and processes one uses

Understands the visual arts in relation to history and cultures

• Knows a variety of historical and cultural contexts regarding characteristics and purposes of works of art
• Understands relationships among works of art in terms of history, aesthetics, and culture
• Understands how factors of time and place (e.g., climate, resources, ideas, technology) influence visual, spatial, or temporal characteristics that give meaning or function to a work of art

Understands the characteristics and merits of one’s own artwork and the artwork of others

• Understands how one’s own artworks, as well as artworks from various eras and cultures, may elicit a variety of responses
• Identifies intentions of those creating artworks
• Knows how specific works are created and relate to historical and cultural contexts

Language Arts

Demonstrates competence in the general skills and strategies of the writing process

• Writes fictional, biographical, autobiographical, and observational narrative compositions (e.g., narrates a sequence of events; evaluates the significance of the incident; provides a specific setting for scenes and incidents; provides supporting descriptive detail [specific names for people, objects, and places; visual details of scenes, objects, and places; descriptions of sounds, smells, specific actions, movements, and gestures; the interior monologue or feelings of the characters]; paces the actions to accommodate time or mood changes; creates a unifying theme or tone; uses literary devices to enhance style and tone)

Demonstrates competence in the stylistic and rhetorical aspects of writing

• Uses a variety of techniques to convey a personal style and voice (e.g., stream of consciousness, multiple viewpoints)

Uses grammatical and mechanical conventions in written compositions

• Uses complex and compound-complex sentences in written compositions

History

Understands the causes of the Great Depression and how it affected American society

• Understands the social and economic impact of the Great Depression (e.g., the impact of the depression on industry and workers; the response of local and state officials in combating the resulting economic and social crises; the effects of the depression on American families and on ethnic and racial minorities; the effect on gender roles; the victimization of African Americans and white sharecroppers)
• Understands the impact of the Great Depression on American culture (e.g., art, literature, and music, and the government’s role in promoting artistic expression; how the works of various American artists reflected American conditions in the 1930s and influenced the New Deal)

Understands how Progressives and others addressed problems of industrial capitalism, urbanization, and political corruption

• Understands the spread of Progressive ideas and the successes of the Progressive movement (e.g., how intellectuals, religious leaders, and writers alerted the public to the problems of urban industrial society; Progressive social reforms in education, conservation, and the “Americanization” of immigrants; contributions of governors such as Hiram Johnson, Robert La Follette, and Charles Evans Hughes)