The decline in Rivera’s reputation since his death in 1957 has been remarkable. It has reached a depth of absurdity today when, in an extraordinary twist of fate, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century is remembered — if he is remembered at all outside Mexico — as merely the unsatisfactory husband of a feminist icon. In a succession of misleading books, plays and films he has been depicted as a pudgy and brutish ‘Mister Frida Kahlo’. Yet this was the man who once said, ‘I love women so much I sometimes think I must be a lesbian.’ In fact the role Rivera played in his wife’s short life was far more important than the role Kahlo played in his. And their complex relationship should never have been reduced to one more gruesome detail in her tortured existence.
The reasons for the recent neglect of Rivera’s achievement are numerous. He originally went out of fashion because of his lifelong flirtation with Stalinism. Today his fame is limited by the fact that his greatest work does not travel; it is impossible to crate up the walls of Mexico’s public buildings and fly them round the world. Nor will his finest pictures ever make headlines by breaking record prices at Sotheby’s, no doubt much to the artist’s posthumous relief. But with Diego Rivera: The Complete Murals, Mexico’s National Council for Culture and the Arts has done much to correct this injustice. This is a work of weighty authority in every sense, particularly when discussing the art, though perhaps more open to challenge in the biographical references. Rivera is said to be married to Angelina Beloff on page 10 and never married to her on page 647; the latter version is correct. The account of Rivera’s quarrel with the Rockefellers ignores the intricacies of Rockefeller family politics and the boorish influence of their architects the Todds. Similarly the personal element in Rivera’s quarrel with Trotsky — the aged luminary had enjoyed a walkout with Rivera’s young wife — is omitted in favour of an unconvincing account of portentous and largely fictional political disagreements. But these are quibbles. This sumptuously illustrated volume is probably the nearest we will ever have to a blockbusting international retrospective; it weighs nine kilos, it is a triumph, the first complete and scholarly account and a worthy monument to his achievement.
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