Palacio nacional de mexico diego rivera biography

The public persona of Diego Rivera and the heroic status bestowed upon him in Mexico was such that the artist became the subject of myth in his own lifetime. His own memories, as recorded in his various autobiographies, have contributed to his image as a precocious child of exotic parentage, a young firebrand who fought in the Mexican Revolution, and a visionary who completely repudiated his participation in the European avant-garde to follow a predestined course as the leader of Mexico's art revolution.

The facts are more prosaic. The product of a middle-class family, the young artist completed an academic course of training at the prestigious Academic course of San Carlos before leaving Mexico for the traditional period of European study. During his first stay abroad, like many other young painters, he was greatly influenced by Post-Impressionists Paul Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Gauguin. As for participating in the early battles of the Mexican Revolution, recent research would seem to indicate that he did not. Although he was in Mexico for a time in late 1910-early 1911, his tales of fighting with the Zapatistas cannot be substantiated.

From the summer of 1911 until the winter of 1920, Rivera lived in Paris. This period of his career has been

•