Viewed as propaganda, Rivera’s work was a failure. It started with a dramatic vision of a future that never materialised and moved on to depict a past that had never taken place. But it recorded a wonderful dream, and it inspired hope. His life was lived in fragments, but it was lived triumphantly, with immense gusto, and it included the admiration of both Einstein and Eisenstein, the society of André Breton, Modigliani and Apollinaire and both the friendship and hostility of Picasso and Trotsky. When Trotsky quarrelled with Rivera he paid a sad tribute to his lost disciple. ‘I can convince people of socialism by the ones and fives’, he said. ‘But Rivera, with his paintings, can influence them by the scores and hundreds’.
Patrick Marnham’s biography of Diego Rivera, Dreaming with his Eyes Open, is published by Bloomsbury.
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