Mural: Palacio de Bellas Artes - Mural 'El Hombre in cruce de caminos' ('Man Controller of the Universe') by Diego Rivera
Today’s Google Doodle celebrates Diego Rivera, a prolific Mexican painter who was born on this day in 1886. Rivera’s speciality was creating large wall murals. He was also an active communist. His colourful wall murals were instrumental in creating the Mexican Mural Movement. His frescos still grace public areas of cities, such as San Francisco and New York.
Rivera is also famous for having married another artist, Frida Kahlo.
He was a prolific painter of murals, travelling to places such as San Francisco, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, New York, as well as Mexico City, to grace such cities with his works of art.
Rivera was born in Guanajuato, the descendant of Spanish nobility. In 1907, Rivera went to study with Eduardo Chicharro in Madrid, Spain. Following this induction to Europe, he then went to work with other artists in Montparnasse in Paris.
One of his close friends was the Italian artist Amedeo Modigliani, who painted his portrait in 1914.
The Google Doodle on Google’s homepage honouring Diego Rivera
He was in Paris for the time of the birth of the cubism movement, as embraced by Pablo Picasso.
Rivera skipped down to Italy in 1920 to study Renaissance art and then returned to Mexico in 1921.
His murals, which he subsequently concentrated on painting in fresco only, depicted such topics as Mexican society and the country’s 1910 revolution.
