Diego Rivera was truly a larger than life figure who spent significant periods of his career in Europe and the U.S. in addition to his native Mexico. His style was informed by disparate sources such as European modern masters and Mexico’s pre-Columbian heritage. Rivera handled major themes appropriate to the scale of his chosen art form: Social inequality; the relationship of nature, industry, and technology; and also the history and fate of Mexico. He is celebrated for both his role in the country’s artistic renaissance and re-invigoration of the mural genre as well as for his outsized persona. Rivera made the panting of murals his primary method, appreciating the large scale and public accessibility the opposite of what he regarded as the
