Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Riverawas a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art. Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among others in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City. In 1931, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Rivera had a...
NationalityMexican
ProfessionPainter
Date of Birth8 December 1886
CityGuanajuato, Mexico
CountryMexico
The artist must try to raise the level of taste of the masses, not debase himself to the level of unformed and impoverished taste.
Only the work of art itself can raise the standard of taste.
Through her paintings, she breaks all the taboos of the woman's body and of female sexuality.
I do not believe in God, yet I believe in Picasso.
I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And would continue to be, up to the moment she died, 27 years later.
Never before had a woman put such agonizing poetry on canvas as Frida did
Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment.
My cubist paintings are my most Mexican.
If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.
Art is like ham-it nourishes people.
I know now that he who hopes to be universal in his art must plant in his own soil. Great art is like a tree, which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own. The more native art is, the more it belongs to the entire world, because taste is rooted in nature. When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the mastersMichelangelo, Czanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican.
July 13, 1954 was the most tragic day of my life. I had lost my beloved Frida forever. To late now I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida.
The rôle of the artist is that of a soldier of the revolution.
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.