How Did Diego Rivera Influence Mexico

Although Diego Rivera was a Mexican painter, he influenced many people by his historical roots in Mexico and his contributions to American society throughout the first half of the twentieth century were eye opening. During an era of revolutions in both politics and technology, Rivera was one of the many who was inspired to create work that was socially extreme at the time. His views of Communism, his view on Capitalism, and his representation of the industrial revolution around the world caught the attention and eyes of nations. His controversial art helped open the minds of Americans to be more culturally diverse and help see the different opinions and aspects to the world. Rivera’s childhood was not bad, being the only downside is that …show more content…
At the age of 10 years old, Diego was doing well in school and became passionately fond of drawing, he eventually started taking evening painting classes at the San Carlos Academy. In 1898, he enrolled there as a full time student. After his art school education in Mexico, Rivera was urged to move to Europe to continue the development of his talent and abilities. Rivera studied with Ilya Ehrenburg, Chaim Soutine, Max Jacob, Amadeo Modigliani and his wife Jeanne Hébuterne. This close circle of artist-friends shaped and influenced his work from 1907 to 1914, which similarities are especially apparent in Rivera’s pieces of that period. His style changed as he adopted similar characteristics of the Cubist movement, from artists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, such as depth of field and realistic view of light. Cubism is an early-20th-century art …show more content…
It led him to combine his two main passions: the Post-Impressionistic use of simple shapes and vibrant colors to represent realist subjects, and the application of paint to walls to create textured frescoes. Thus, the Mexican Mural Renaissance was born” (Diego Rivera biography). In the fall of 1922, Rivera helped establish the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers and then later he would join the Mexican Communist Party. His murals, mostly painted in fresco only, dealt with Mexican society and reflected the country's 1910 Revolution. In 1910, President Porfirio Diaz let Americans put investments in Mexico and was later overthrown. Shifra Goldman, an American art historian, explains Riveras plan on painting his murals after the revolution. “After the Mexican Revolution Rivera was concerned with two issues, and these determined his artistic themes: the need to offset the contempt with which the conquistadors had viewed the ancient Indian civilizations, and the need to offset the anti-mestizo and anti-Indian attitudes of the European-oriented ruling classes during the porfiriato (the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz). Mestizo and Indian peasants formed the basic fighting forces of the Revolution, and their economic