Diego Rivera’s America

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA)

 July 16, 2022–January 2, 2023

 Diego Rivera, The Flower Carrier, 1935; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Albert M. Bender Collection, gift of Albert M. Bender in memory of Caroline Walter; © 2022 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) announces Diego Rivera’s America, the most in-depth examination of the artist’s work in over two decades. Diego Rivera’s America brings together more than 150 of Rivera’s paintings, frescoes and drawings—as well as three galleries devoted to large-scale film projections of highly influential murals he created in Mexico and the U.S. On view from July 16, 2022–January 2, 2023, the exhibition focuses on his work from the 1920s to the mid-1940s, the richest years of Rivera’s prolific career. During these two key decades, Rivera created a new vision for North America, informed by his travels in Mexico and the United States.

Diego Rivera, Dance in Tehuantepec, 1928. Oil on canvas, 79 x 64 1/2 in. (200.7 x 163.8 cm). Collection of Eduardo F. Costantini, Buenos Aires.

“Rivera was one of the most aesthetically, socially and politically ambitious artists of the 20th century,” notes guest curator James Oles. “He was deeply concerned with transforming society and shaping identity—Mexican identity, of course, but also American identity, in the broadest sense of the term. Because of his utopian belief in the power of art to change the world, Rivera is an essential artist to explore anew today, from a contemporary perspective.”

 

Organization

Diego Rivera’s America is curated by James Oles, guest curator, with Maria Castro, assistant curator of painting and sculpture, SFMOMA. The exhibitionis co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. 

Diego Rivera, Flower Seller, 1926. Oil on canvas, 35 1/4 x 43 1/4 in. (89.5 x 109.9 cm). Honolulu Museum of Art, Gift of Mr and Mrs. Philip E. Spalding, 1932, 41.5.

Exhibition Scope

Diego Rivera’s America builds on SFMOMA’s collection of over 70 works by Rivera, one of the largest in the world. It also features paintings, drawings and frescoes borrowed from public and private collections in Mexico, the U.S. and the U.K., reuniting many for the first time since the artist’s death. Iconic and much-loved works, such as The Corn Grinder (1926), Dance in Tehuantepec (1928), Flower Carrier (1935) and Portrait of Lupe Marín (1938), will be shown alongside paintings that have not been seen publicly since leaving the artist’s studio.

Diego Rivera, La bordadora (The Embroiderer), 1928; The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund; © 2022 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: © 2022 Christie’s Images Limited

The exhibition is the first to examine Rivera’s work thematically, with galleries dedicated to places like Tehuantepec and Manhattan that captured his imagination, and to his favorite subjects, such as street markets, popular celebrations and images of industry. It begins with Rivera’s first mural commission, Creation (1922–23), a project that—like much of his work—looks to past artistic traditions while also embracing avant-garde strategies. In the 1920s, working mainly in Mexico, Rivera established his mature style, distinguished by rounded forms, intense colors, and increasingly dense compositions. He cemented an interest in allegory, popular culture, family, labor, and the proletarian revolution, themes that would be central to his famous murals in San Francisco, Detroit and New York of the early 1930s, and that would resonate in his paintings and drawings through the 1940s.

The culmination of the exhibition is Rivera’s last U.S. mural, a colossal work measuring 22 feet high by 74 feet wide, painted for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1940. The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on the Continent—commonly known as Pan American Unity—is free to all visitors to view in SFMOMA’s Roberts Family Gallery. This 10-panel portable fresco, on loan from City College of San Francisco until 2024, explores his vision of a shared history and future for Mexico and the U.S.

 

Exhibition Highlights & Themes

Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886–1957) believed in the power of art to educate, inspire action and transform society. He considered art an essential weapon in the utopian struggle for greater social equality and justice. Paintings such as The Tortilla Maker (1926) and Weaving (1936) illuminate Rivera’s desire to focus on everyday people as the protagonists of national narratives. From the early 1920s to the mid-1940s, he reimagined Mexican national identity on a vast scale, embraced the industrial age in the U.S. and conceived of a greater America in which unity, rather than division, was paramount.

Rivera’s idea of “America” was hemispheric and transnational, and did not refer only to the United States, as he stated in 1931: “I mean by America, the territory included between the two ice barriers of the two poles. A fig for your barriers of wire and frontier guards.” Above all he believed that the U.S. and Mexico shared a similar historical foundation in which a rich Indigenous past had been suppressed by colonial violence. He also believed the countries shared a creative force and revolutionary impulse that distinguished them from Europe. Diego Rivera’s America invites audiences to reflect on the shared histories and challenges that connect us across political borders.

The exhibition proposes new interpretations of some of Rivera’s most famous paintings, including Flower Seller (1926), on loan from the Honolulu Museum of Art, and a 1938 surrealist landscape from the collection of the Brooklyn Museum of Art. A suite of his humorous designs for the modernist ballet H.P. (Horsepower), on loan from The Museum of Modern Art, New York, will be presented together along with the first recreations of Rivera’s costumes from the ballet since 1932. The presentation also unveils paintings lost to scholars or never exhibited before, among them a stunning double portrait commissioned by the mother of Jane and Peter Fonda in 1941.

The galleries devoted to Rivera’s U.S. murals feature large-scale preliminary sketches and cartoons for works such as his censored Rockefeller Center project of 1933, as well as two fresco panels painted in New York. His timely invitation to return to San Francisco in 1940 to paint a large mural in front of a live audience at the Golden Gate International Exposition on Treasure Island allowed him the ideal opportunity to envision a collective American response to a world collapsing again into war.

 

Diego Rivera in San Francisco

San Francisco was particularly important to Rivera; it was the first place he painted murals in the U.S. Likewise, his work was deeply influential to artists and muralists across the Bay Area. Through their work, Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo became deeply connected to local cultural figures. San Francisco was also where Rivera and Kahlo remarried in 1940, after their brief divorce. The exhibition will present portraits of their wide circle of friends in San Francisco, including three important paintings by Frida Kahlo.

Diego Rivera’s America features two galleries dedicated to Rivera’s San Francisco projects, with preparatory drawings for two murals from 1930–31: Allegory of California and The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City. The exhibition will also incorporate Rivera’s portable fresco Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees (1931), originally painted for a private home and now in the collection of the University of California, Berkeley. Brought together for the first time, these works provide unparalleled insight into Rivera’s time in San Francisco and highlight the artist’s role in helping to establish a legacy of politically engaged muralism that remains an indelible part of the city’s identity and built environment.

Diego Rivera’s America spotlights paintings that depict life in Mexico and in the U.S. and concludes with the vast Pan American Unity fresco that unites both countries. Rivera’s work invites us to consider the past while also asserting the power of art to envision solutions to cultural, economic and political challenges and shape the present.

 

Catalogue

Diego Rivera's America is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue that serves as a guide to two crucial decades when Rivera was at the peak of his international fame. Essays by leading experts on Rivera and modern Mexican art devote attention to iconic paintings as well as works that will be new even to scholars—revealing fresh insights into his artistic process. The book features more than 300 illustrations, with essays by James Oles, Maria Castro, Claire F. Fox, John Lear and Sandra Zetina, and contributions by Michelle Barger and Kiernan Graves, Dafne Cruz Porchini, Jennifer A. González, Rachel Kaplan and Adriana Zavala. The catalogue is edited by James Oles and published by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in association with University of California Press.

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Art History News2 months ago
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The Clark Art Institute’s latest exhibition presents four centuries of war imagery from Europe and the United States in As They Saw It: Artists Witnessing War, on view March 5–May 30, 2022. Spanning European and American art from 1520–1920, the exhibition of prints, drawings, and photographs shows how artists have portrayed periods of military conflict, bringing war off the battlefield and into the homes and lives of those who were often at a far remove from the scene. The exhibition is on view in the Eugene V. Thaw Gallery of the Clark’s Manton Research Center. Visual media have ... read more
Art History News2 months ago
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Art History News2 months ago
Matisse: The Red Studio

*Museum of Modern Art* *May 1 – September 10, 2022 * * SMK – The National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen * * October 13, 2022, through February 26, 2023.* The Museum of Modern Art announces Matisse: The Red Studio, an exhibition focusing on the genesis and history of Matisse’s The Red Studio (1911), a painting that has remained among MoMA’s most important works since it was acquired in 1949. The large canvas depicts the artist’s studio filled with his paintings and sculptures, furniture, and decorative objects. This exhibition reunites the artworks shown in The Red Studio for ... read more
Art History News2 months ago
The Wyeth Foundation for American Art - more than 7,000 works of Andrew Wyeth

xxx Andrew Wyeth, BLACK HUNTER, 1938, tempera on panel. Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art © 2022 Andrew Wyeth/Artist Rights Society (ARS) Andrew Wyeth, FAMILY TREE STUDY, 1964, watercolor on paper. Collection of the Wyeth Foundation for American Art © 2022 Andrew Wyeth/Artist Rights Society (ARS) The Wyeth Foundation for American Art has established a collection-sharing arrangement providing for more than 7,000 works of Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) to be maintained, conserved and exhibited for the general public at the Brandywine River Museum of Art and the Farnswort... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Christie’s Announces 20/21 Marquee Week Day Sales May 13- 16
Christie’s Announces 20/21 Marquee Week Day Sales Post-War and Contemporary Art Day Sale | 13 May The Collection of Thomas and Doris Ammann Day Sale | 13 May Impressionist and Modern Works on Paper and Day Sale | 14 May The Surrealist World of Rosalind Gersten Jacobs and Melvin Jacobs | 14 May Picasso Ceramics | Online | 2 – 16 May [image: Property from the Family of Nina Van Rensselaer WAYNE THIEBAUD (1920 - 2021) Three Ice Cream Cones oil on canvas 12 x 15 in. (30.5 x 38.1 cm.) Painted in 1964. $2,500,000-3,500,000] Property from the Family of Nina Van Rensselaer WAYNE THIEBAUD (1... read more
Art History News2 months ago
The Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Conn., announced the promised gift of a major collection of European and American art

Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967), Bridle Path, 1939, oil on canvas, 23 3/8 x 42 1/8 in.*Courtesy of the Bruce Museum* The identities of the collectors of this transformative gift of 70 artworks—which includes Edward Hopper’s seminal final painting *Two Comedians* (1966)—have been guessed at, but not revealed, according to ARTnews. Edward Hopper (American, 1882-1967), Bridle Path, 1939, oil on canvas, 23 3/8 x 42 1/8 in.*Courtesy of the Bruce Museum* The identities of the collectors of this transformative gift of 70 artworks—which includes Edward Hopper’s seminal final pain... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Impressionism: Franco-German Encounters
With a new presentation of over 80 works by French and German Impressionists, the Hamburger Kunsthalle is taking a fresh look at one of the defining art movements of modernism as a European phenomenon. Paintings, sculptures and pastels are presented in new constellations in five redesigned halls in the Licht­wark Gallery. Major works by Max Liebermann, Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt, the »triumvirate of German Impressionism«, meet up here with French icons such as Édouard Manet, Auguste Renoir and Claude Monet. The show also brings in artists who have not been presented at the Ham... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Sotheby's Modern Evening sale on May 17.

The Toledo Museum of Art Will Deaccession Three Impressionist Paintings That Could Fetch More Than $60 Million at Sotheby’s [image: Paul Cézanne, Clairière (The Glade) (ca. 1895). Courtesy of Sotheby's.]Paul Cézanne, *Clairière (The Glade)* (ca. 1895). Courtesy of Sotheby's. When Steve Cohen’s 1932 Picasso comes up for sale at Sotheby’s on May 17, it will be joined on the auction block by three Impressionist paintings from the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art (TMA), which could net as much as $64 million—the largest institutional deaccession of the season. The consignment in... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Christie’s 20th Century Evening Sale May 12 - Additional works

Pissarro seized by Nazis to be sold at auction after families settle In an undated image provided via Christie’s, “The Anse des Pilotes, Le Havre,” by Camille Pissarro, painted in 1903. A Pissarro painting that was at the center of a dispute between the heirs of a Jewish couple whose art collection was seized by the Nazis before World War II and a Jewish family who bought it in 1994 will be sold at auction after the two sides reached agreement. Via Christie’s via The New York Times. The details of the settlement were not disclosed, but Christie’s has placed an estimate of $1.2 ... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Diego Rivera’s America

* San Francisco Museum of Modern Art * * July 16, 2022–January 2, 2023* Diego Rivera, Flower Seller, 1926; Honolulu Museum of Art, gift of Mr. and Mrs. Philip E. Spalding, 1932; © Bancode México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo: courtesy Honolulu Museum of Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) will present *Diego Rivera’s America**,* the most in-depth examination of the artist’s work in over two decades. *Diego Rivera’s America* brings together more than 150 of Rivera’s paintings, fresc... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence

Pontormo, del Sarto, Foschi. One of these names is much less of a household name when it comes to 16th-century Italian art, but the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia aims to change that this January. “Wealth and Beauty: Pier Francesco Foschi and Painting in Renaissance Florence,” organized by Nelda Damiano, the museum’s Pierre Daura Curator of European Art, is the first exhibition dedicated to Pier Francesco Foschi (1502 – 1567), a highly prolific and fashionable Florentine painter whose career spanned nearly five decades. Despite his success at the time, he fell i... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia,

* The Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg (MFA)* *February 12 through May 8, 2022* At the dawn of the seventeenth century, a new generation of artists emerged in Rome that would develop an artistic movement known as the Baroque period. Following the Renaissance, this eccentric new style spread rapidly through Europe and reached to the Americas. *Bernini and the Roman Baroque: Masterpieces** from Palazzo Chigi in Ariccia* explores the genesis of this artistic movement. Through a selection of works from 40 artists, including 10 works by Gian Lorenzo Bernini, this exhibition illum... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Christie's New York 20th Century Evening Sale May 12 2022 - Updated

Claude Monet, (1840-1926), Champ d'avoine et de coquelicots, signed and dated 'Claude Monet 90' (lower right), oil on canvas, 25.5/8 x 36.1/4 in. (65 x 92.1 cm.) Painted in Giverny in 1890. © Christie's Images Ltd 2022. Claude Monet’s Champ d’avoine et de coquelicots, (estimate: $12 million – 18 million) will highlight the 20th Century Evening Sale during the Spring Marquee Week of sales. The 1890 masterwork comes to Christie’s from an Important Private French Collection along with two wonderful examples from the late 19th century offered in the Impressionist and Modern Art Day Sale... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Sotheby's Modern Evening Auction on 27 April Hong Kong

Dora Maar was a commanding presence and this portrait by Picasso conveys her beauty and intellect to powerful effect. Painted in the French tricolor of red, white and blue – and prominently signed and dated – it captures a real sense of Maar’s personality and speaks eloquently of Picasso’s feelings. Interest in Picasso has been surging among Asian collectors, as we witnessed last year with two consecutive auction records for the artist in Asia, most notably for a portrait of Picasso’s second wife Jacqueline Roque. This season we are thrilled to present a museum-quality work that r... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Heritage May 10 American Art Signature® Auction
Heritage Auctions has announced one of the most comprehensive – and jubilant – American art events in recent memory. In the words of Senior Vice President Aviva Lehmann, the May 10 American Art Signature® Auction, featuring 150 works, is “a museum-quality auction showing off our strength and ability to curate a perfect sale that covers every genre of American Art.” The event, which is now open for bidding, spans the breadth of American art, from Ashcan to Impressionism, Regionalism to Hudson River, illustration to sculpture. Here, collectors are treated to everything from Rembran... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Distinguished American Paintings

[image: QUESTROYAL] Questroyal Fine Art 903 Park Avenue (at 79th Street) Third Floor New York, NY 10075 (212) 744-3586 gallery@questroyalfineart.com questroyalfineart.com [image: Paintings distinguished by provenance and history] [image: Autumn Landscape with Cattle, 1879 by Jasper Francis Cropsey (1823–1900)] [image: Fire Opals (Lady in Furs: Portrait of Mrs. Searls), 1912 by Childe Hassam (1859–1935)] [image: Palm Tree, Barbados by Joseph Stella (1877–1946)] [image: Twilight in the Wilderness, 1864 by John Williamson (1826–1885)] [image: Tug Boats, 1937 by Reginald Marsh (1898–1954)] read more
Art History News2 months ago
Scenes of Transcendent Beauty: Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone

Thomas Moran (England, 1837–1926), Hot Springs of Gardiner's River, Yellowstone Park, 1871. Watercolor and graphite on paper. 9 7/8 x 13 inches. On loan from the Yellowstone Heritage and Research Center. *The National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) will open Scenes of Transcendent Beauty: Thomas Moran’s Yellowstone on May 14, 2022, an exhibition celebrating Yellowstone National Park’s 150th Anniversary this year. The exhibition will be on view through August 23, 2022.* *Scenes of Transcendent Beauty* explores the impact of Yellowstone on Thomas Moran and of Moran on Yellowstone. ... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Matisse in the 1930s

*Philadelphia Museum of Art, * *October 19, 2022–January 29, 2023 * *Paris, Musée de l’Orangerie, * *February 27, 2023–May 29, 2023 * *Musée Matisse Nice, * *June 23, 2023–September 24, 2023* [image: Henri Matisse "Large Reclining Nude" 1935. 26 1/8 × 36 3/4 inches (66.4 × 93.3 cm). Oil on canvas Baltimore Museum of Art: The Cone Collection, formed by Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone of Baltimore, Maryland, 1950.258. © 2022 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.] Henri Matisse "Large Reclining Nude" 1935. 26 1/8 × 36 3/4 inches (66.4 × 93.3 cm). Oil ... read more
Art History News2 months ago
Donatello, the Renaissance
From 19 March to 31 July 2022 the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi and the Musei del Bargello host *ç*, an historic, once-in-a-lifetime exhibition which sets out to reconstruct the astonishing career of one of the most important and influential masters of Italian art of any age, juxtaposing his work with masterpieces by artists who were his contemporaries such as Brunelleschi, Masaccio, Andrea Mantegna, Giovanni Bellini, Raphael and Michelangelo. Curated by Francesco Caglioti, professor of medieval art history at the Scuola Normale di Pisa, the exhibition showcases over 130 works of... read more
Art History News3 months ago
An American Place

*Palmer Museum of Art* January 29 - May 1, 2022 SPECIAL EXHIBITIONS GALLERY, SECOND FLOOR The story of the coming of age of American art is filled with alliances and ruptures, expatriates and immigrants, transatlantic dialogues and the search for an authentic aesthetic rooted in America. *An American Place* examines the complexity of this national narrative, highlighting a century of American art from the post-Civil War decades through the Civil Rights era. The exhibition includes paintings, works on paper, and sculptures drawn from the recent bequest of collectors and philanthro... read more
Art History News3 months ago
Canaletto’s Venice Revisited

*Canaletto’s Venice Revisited *is now open at the National Maritime Museum. This major exhibition displays the complete set of 24 Venetian views painted by Canaletto in the 1730s. The works, from the world famous collection at Woburn Abbey, form the largest single commission the Italian artist ever received. *Canaletto’s Venice Revisited *reassesses Canaletto at the height of his career, looking beyond the broad views he is famous for to also closely examine the features that bring his Venice to life. Don’t miss this rare opportunity to see this collection up close at the Natio... read more
Art History News3 months ago
Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism

- *Opening Sunday, May 29 at The Westmoreland Museum of American Art*, in Greensburg, Penn., the exhibition *Alone Together: Encounters in American Realism* brings together works of art separated by almost a century to consider how they are bound together by the shared experience of living and working in difficult times. Edward Biberman (1904–1986), Tear Gas and Water Hoses, 1945, Oil on canvas, 29 x 36 inches, The Schoen Collection, American Scene Painting The exhibition is guest curated by Alex J. Taylor, Assistant Professor in the Department of History of Ar... read more
Art History News3 months ago
Completed Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné,

Eastman Johnson, Self-Portrait, c. 1850, National Gallery of Art, Washington, District of Columbia, John Davis Hatch Collection (1979.20.73). The National Academy of Design is pleased to announce the publication of the *Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné: Drawings & Prints* on April 5, the anniversary of the artist’s death. The addition of this section completes the catalogue raisonné of American artist Eastman Johnson, following the section dedicated to his paintings that was first published online in July 2021. The Eastman Johnson Catalogue Raisonné (EJCR) is founded and dire... read more
Art History News3 months ago
Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on 17 May: Claude Monet , Pablo Picasso , Philip Guston

Picasso’s Rapturous 1932 Homage to Marie-Thérèse Walter Painted in April 1932, 90 years ago to the month, *Femme nue couchée* is one of Pablo Picasso’s most monumental and uninhibitedly sensual portrayals of Marie-Thérèse Walter. Appearing at auction for the first time, the large-scale painting is poised to achieve in excess of $60 million at Sotheby’s Modern Evening Auction on 17 May, making it one of the most valuable portraits of Marie-Thérèse Walter ever offered at auction. Marie-Thérèse was the inspiration for many of Picasso’s greatest works, with 1932 - the year in which h... read more
Art History News3 months ago
Latest Art History News

Art History News2 minutes ago Raphael—The Power of Renaissance Imagery: The Dresden Tapestries As part of a historic exhibition, the Columbus Museum of Art (CMA) will bring a set of six important tapestries designed by Raphael from the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (GAM) in Dresden, Germany, to the U.S. for the first time. These tapestries are woven from the same Raphael designs used to create the tapestries for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in 1515-16. *Raphael—The Power of Renaissance Imagery: The Dresden Tapestries and their Impact *will be on view at the *Columbus Museum of ... read more