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XXXXXXXXXXMuralist Diego Rivera's Depiction of the Mexican Revolution
Jose Perez
ARTH XXXXXXXXXX
Art Mexico: Ancient to Modern
September 12, 2022
Diego Rivera made a great contribution in Mexican of politics through his artwork. His works can be considered in a sense; an adopted influence from his time a
oad. Influenced by painters such as Picasso, Cezanne, and earlier artworks of classical portrayals. Rivera started experimenting with the fresco media and mural paintings upon his return to Mexico. The murals depict the challenges and difficulties the Mexican people experienced in Diaz's dictatorial regime.[footnoteRef:1] The Mexican Muralist Movement remains significant in creating political relations between people and the government. Moreover, they stand as an account of the Mexican citizens and the state. Diego Rivera is one of the three great Mexican muralists, along with David Alfaro Siqueiros and Jose Clemente Orozco. His vision through theses murals become political tools that serve the people of various hierarchal levels,
inging forth change through progressive revolutionary theory helping in the enhancement of national identity, growth and development. This paper will critically discuss how muralist Diego Rivera depicts the Mexican revolution. [1: Orozco, Lopez. The Revolution, Vanguard Artists, and Mural Painting. Third Text 28 (3): 256–68, 2014.]
It is ultimately significant to understand the history of the Mexican revolution in order to comprehend the ultimate effect and reach of Diego Rivera's murals. This preceding history is important for this research because without this, it would be impossible to understand the main purpose and meaning of Rivera's work. When the Mexican revolution began in 1910, Mexico was divided into two hierarchal classes. The first class was the ruling upper-class people and Porfirio Diaz's government. The second class comprised the oppressed lower class people experiencing inequalities and injustices under the regime.[footnoteRef:2] The working lower-class found themselves amidst old colonial oppression of the feudal system. These people demanded rewards for their arduous work product, a fair cut if you will of the benefits from the wealth the ruling class and government extracted from them. [2: Lopez. The Revolution, Vanguard Artists, and Mural Painting. 28 (3): 256–68.]
Diaz, through his dictatorship, successfully managed to export a great deal of the Mexican economic riches obtained through industrialization and failed to recognize the great division between the rich and the poor, ultimately failing to care for the country’s marginalized groups. However, Emiliano Zapata and Francisco Villa were two leaders who chipped in and stood for the troubled masses in the southern and northern parts of Mexico, respectively.[footnoteRef:3] The Zapata-led portion advocated for greater representation and land reforms. On the other hand, the liberals started to challenge Diaz's regime, whose rule violated the 1877 Mexican constitution by staying in power for 34 years. Consequently, the uprising of peasant rebels successfully ended Diaz's presidency. However, the following years proved challenging for the Mexican people subjected to a power vacuum, and the economic, political, and societal stability was at risk. [3: Lopez. The Revolution, Vanguard Artists, and Mural Painting. 28 (3): 256–68.
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The artistic aesthetic and ideology of Rivera were shaped by Diaz's government and the Mexican revolution. His main concern was the portrayal of revolutionary heroes, the people, and condemning the regime. His murals revolved around condemning colonialists and conquistadores, socialist revolution, imperialism, and capitalism rebellions, exalting Indigenous people and the Mexican people's culture, and pointing out repression and injustices. Rivera's art was primarily a formal accusation of sort of the abuses and pain experienced under the regime of Diaz. Moreover, he would incorporate Karl Marx's scenes in his paintings, exploitation conflicts, and repression of workers.[footnoteRef:4] Subsequently, all the subjects mentioned above enabled Mexican people to relate, regardless of commonality in gender, race, and revolutionary roles. His critique was evident in power and authority concentration in the government of Mexico under Diaz's regime. [4: Wa
en. Painting the Revolution: State, Politics, and Ideology in Mexican Muralism. 28 (3): 282–91.]
Rivera's ideological views on society were vital in his creation of work. The Diaz regime was characterized by the oppression and suppression of the poor and the lower working class. The ruling elitists and the government considered this group of citizens lesser human beings. However, Rivera portrays the class as different and the people who initiated the revolution in Mexico as they sought to overturn the oppression. His murals portrayed daily life and integration scenes and cele
ated the Mexican people's Indigenous and multiethnic roots. His art always depicts these people as powerful, larger than life itself. Through his murals, he expresses sympathy for the oppressed people by capturing instances of their daily lives as crucial and common throughout Mexico. However, instead of attempting to make people feel bad for them, he artistically employs curved shapes,
ight and natural colors, a beautiful flow, which renders us to find dignity and deeper appreciation in every face portrayed. Rivera's artwork demonstrates that art can achieve an elevated political role and maintain an artwork sense, that is, be aesthetically beautiful.[footnoteRef:5] [5: Vazquez, Adolfo. Diego Rivera: Painting and Partisanship. Third Text 28 (3): 269–70, 2016.]
Diego Rivera's murals are studied in history lessons and have become a visual textbook of the past issues and realities in the lives of the Mexican people. In addition, his murals represent the unique Mexican landscape and how its beauty parallels the citizen's struggle and develops them to form the national language. Rivera believed in technology and its ability to promote and enhance change revolutions, provided they did not fall under capitalist state control.[footnoteRef:6] Through his artistic work, he remained a visionary and a revolutionary a forward thinker in how he wanted the world to take shape in becoming integral to technology, factories, and movies. [6: Wa
en. Painting the Revolution: State, Politics, and Ideology in Mexican Muralism. 28 (3): 282–91.
]
Diego Rivera's artwork depicts the events of the 20th century, significantly influencing the perceptions of the revolutionary mural artists. The establishment of the Communist Party of Mexico filled the void created by the previous authoritarian regime. As Revolutionary changes were occu
ing, so too were communist revolutions across the globe. This moment presented a perfect opportunity for the communist ideas and views to spread across Mexico, from a revolution and other movements led by workers in different areas. At this point, Rivera depicts an enervated central state comprising workers and intellectuals who demanded a revolution in Mexican society, entailing fertile settings in which developing revolutionary movements and radical ideas could affect.[footnoteRef:7] [7: Smith, Stephanie. The Power and Politics of Art in Postrevolutionary Mexico. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017.
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As depicted by Diego Rivera, the Communist Party of Mexico started to develop and expand in the politics of post-revolutionary Mexico. The muralists in Mexico, like Rivera, were in dire need of such development for progress. Their revolutionary ideas and views changed the Mexican people's minds.[footnoteRef:8] Their commitment was primarily to popular struggles, radical political changes, and unaddressed social injustices in Mexico during this time. As evident in Rivera's work, Muralism in Mexico became among the great emulations of the Leftist theory in contemporary art to influence the masses. [8: Adolfo. Diego Rivera: Painting and Partisanship. 28 (3): 269–70.
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Most muralists lived through the oppression and pain experienced during the Diaz regime and the next revolution. After the Mexican political and social uncertainties and revolution, Diego Rivera joined the Communist Party of Mexico in 1922. However, there always were conflicts between him and the party as he found it challenging to work for the party and, at the same time, paint. The party kicked him out several times, accusing him of working with the government but eventually allowed him to rejoin. They fo
ade the party intending to uphold the principles of revolution incu
ed in the Mexican revolution legacy. The works of Rivera portray him as one excellent instance of unity between the communist theory and artwork.
Diego Rivera represents the muralist movement as an element that impacted the creation of a united country. The movement served as a huge educational tool to promote politics. It presented an opportunity for people unable to experience historical culture before the measurements that an artist or mural could offer.[footnoteRef:9] Rivera's depictions adapted to culture and politics and enhanced the security of the nationalist identity. They were not only revolutionary in the way they presented a political statement but also in how they failed to be privatized. The murals did not only exist in museums or galleries, and the artists did not allow their trading or buying, but they intended and opened them to the public for viewership. A vast amount of low working class and rural people was illiterate; thus, the artists and the intellectuals assumed the duty of
inging forth the nation's liberation through mural depictions. The sole purpose of Rivera's murals was the education and inspiration of these classes of illiterates and elitists.[footnoteRef:10] [9: Coffey, Mary. Muralism and the People: Culture, Popular Citizenship, and Government in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. Communication Review 5 (1): 7, 2018.
] [10: Mary. Muralism and the People: Culture, Popular Citizenship, and Government in Post-Revolutionary Mexico. 5 (1): 7.]
Diego Rivera's art is considered a way to demonstrate the difficult conditions the Mexican people experienced under a capitalist and oppressive government. Rivera emphasizes his view that citizens were not perceived as people but regarded as a number in an industrial and impersonal government. Rivera was instrumental in initiating the journal El Machete, which first served as an outlet for the Sculptors' and Painters' Union. This journal was later signed as a communication tool of the Communist Party of Mexico. The paintings and writings of this notable muralist incorporated Mexican citizens, their country, and their society. His work enabled him to produce new and decent symbols, which offered him a basis to criticize exploitation and bourgeois, advances of socialism, and Mexico’s colonization. Subsequently, his artwork and murals portray an essence of emotional revolution, one that for the first time represented and synthesized the oppression in Latin America, especially the cultural development and people of Mexico.[footnoteRef:11] Therefore, he can provide such emotional depictions and raw truth in his frescos. [11: Adolfo. Diego Rivera: Painting and Partisanship. 28 (3): 269–70.]
Through his artistic work, Rivera succeeded in creating a sense of new Mexican national identity and, in a unique way, cele
ated the Mexican revolution values which can be viewed as revolutionary media. Muralism proved to be a form of proletarian art since it was appealing to the working-class people and the masses. Rivera’s mural depictions,