Diego Rivera ( de A go rih VEH ruh) was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886. He had a twin brother, but his brother died when he was only a year and a half old. When he was six years old Diego's family moved to Mexico City.

He enrolled in evening art classes at the Academy of San Carlos, but was later expelled for participating in student revolts at the school. When he was thirteen his father enrolled him in a military academy, but that only lasted two weeks, and he enrolled in regular classes. These experiences were only the beginning of the controversy which would surround Rivera all his life.

Later he went to Spain where he was awarded a four year scholarship to study art in Europe. He made various trips to France, Belgium, Holland, and Great Britian until finally settling in Paris in 1911.

Diego Rivera became director of the Academy of San Carlos in 1929. He is noted for the murals he painted. These were large paintings which covered walls of buildings. Because of his political views, some of his murals were not accepted by the people. The city of Detroit commissioned him to paint a mural, Detroit Industry for the garden court of the Detroit Institute of Art.

When he proposed a large mural, Man at the Crossroads in New York, he thought his friendship with the Rockefeller family would allow him to put in the scene a picture of Lenin, Communist leader in Russia. Nelson Rockefeller asked him to replace the picture of Lenin with another face, but Diego refused. He offered to put a picture of Lincoln on the other side of the mural, but that offer was refused by the art institute. They covered up the mural so people couldn't view it, and the next year it was destroyed. Rivera later painted a smaller version of the same mural in Mexico City.

Fourteen years later he painted another controversial mural in Mexico for the Hotel del Prado. He included in it words denying the existence of God. Because of the scandal that occurred, the public was not allowed to view it for nine years.

Four years after that incident he made a mural in Mexico in which he painted Stalin accompanied by Mao Tsetung (MAH oh DZUH DOONG), Chinese Communist leader. Officials removed it from the building. Rivera was a member of the Communist party the last thirty years of his life, but his insistence on promoting his political views did not set well with the people of Mexico and the United States who commissioned him to paint murals for them.

Rivera had many women in his life. He had a son and a daughter by two different women. Then he married Guadalupe Marin and they had a daughter. That marriage ended and he married Frida Kahol. They divorced and remarried. After her death he married Emma Hurtado, who was his art dealer.

He died of heart failure at the age of seventy-one.

In our featured painting The Flower Carrier notice the bold, bright colors he uses. With the use of shadows he makes the subject stand out from the background of the painting almost as if the figures are outlined. How does he repeat the colors? Compare the size of the man to the size of the woman. The man is carrying the heavy load, but he appears to be a smaller person than the woman putting the load on his back.