This month we celebrate the birth date of Diego Rivera, born in Guanajuato on December 8, 1886. One of Mexico’s greatest visual artists, he is recognized as everywhere.
His 1931 MOMA retrospective exhibit in New York drew unprecedented crowds, breaking records of attendance in that museum. It was the apogee of Rivera’s career; at that time he was the most renowned and celebrated artist in the world. Rivera’s fame comes from the excellence of his technique, and his imagination, evidenced first in his oil paintings, and then in his monumental murals which defined him; as he defined the new Mexican art movement itself—muralism.
Rivera deserves, and would require an entire article to adequately describe who he was. However, in my blog I am committed to those public figures and events directly connected to San Miguel de Allende. Unfortunately, Diego Rivera did not teach art at the art school founded by Cossio del Pomar and Stirling Dickinson—although there is no doubt they would have been thrilled to have him here. Neither did he, from what I have gathered, spend a significant amount of time in San Miguel. But Rivera did, come to San Miguel for at least one visit to see the murals that had been painted in the School of Fine Arts at Centro Nigromate; the place we all know as Bellas Artes. Above is a fragment of the monumental mural—his largest anywhere—at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. We can only imagine what he could have painted for San Miguel!
Aside from his influence on the muralists who painted here, and setting foot in our city, how does Diego Rivera fit into the history of San Miguel de Allende? I offer you three anecdotes about the great master tying him to San Miguel, in both a direct and an indirect way.
The first is the connection to Carmen Cereceda, a young artist born in Chile in 1926. By the end of the 1940s Diego Rivera was established as one of the greats of muralism—part of the “tres grandes,” along with Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Rivera visited Chile for a conference, and became enchanted with the country and its people. This connection fit perfectly into Carmen’s plan. After completing her studies in Fine Arts at the University of Chile, she decided to come to Mexico to study muralism. A confident young woman, she wanted to study with the best of the genre—Diego Rivera.
Once in Mexico City, she arrived at Rivera’s home and studio, and knocked on the door. The housekeeper opened it and was confronted with a slight young woman who announced, “I am here to speak to Señor Rivera.”
“And who are you?” asked the housekeeper.
“My name is Carmen Cereceda, and I have come to see the master. Is he in?”
“Yes, he is in his studio upstairs,” said the housekeeper. “But you cannot see him,”
“And why is that?” the young woman insisted.
“He will only see someone on appointment,” said the housekeeper, then added, frowning. “I am sorry, but you will have to leave,”
Carmen stood for a moment. She studied the space between the housekeeper’s arm on the door and the floor, then stooping down quickly she scrambled under the housekeeper’s arm and into the house. As the housekeeper chased after her, repeating her injunction, Carmen ran up to the top of the stairs and barged into Rivera’s studio.
“Buenos días, maestro,” she declared breathlessly, “I have come from Chile and I would like to work with you.”
Perhaps it was the sight of a pretty young woman, or her self-confidence, or the fact that she was from Chile, but Rivera smiled and invited her in. And within a short time she became one of the assistants in his studio, learning fresco techniques from the master himself.
Carmen Cereceda did prove her gift as an artist, not only to Rivera, but to the world, becoming a renowned muralist herself. Many years later, decades after Rivera had died in 1957, Carmen came to San Miguel de Allende to paint a mural in the lobby of the Angela Peralta Theater. That beautiful mural with her unique touches of magical realism remains to this day; and the indirect connection to Diego Rivera through her being his assistant is here as well.
Mural by Carmen Cereceda: Homage to Art
During the time Carmen was painting her mural, she was living in San Miguel. One afternoon while she was working a man came to see her.
“I’m here from Queretaro and I come to see you because you knew Diego Rivera,” he announced
From his pocket he took out a small pistol with a beautifully carved handle, and asked her if she knew whether this belonged to Diego Rivera. Carmen said she had never known Rivera to carry a weapon and could not in any way claim that this one belonged to him. She asked the man how he happened to have this in his possession.
The man explained that he was a taxi driver, and that some years before two men got into his taxi and he drove them to their destination. Once there, they said they had no money to pay his fee. Angrily he demanded they produce something of value to reimburse him for his service.
“We work for Diego Rivera,” one of them said, “and he is a famous painter.”
Then they handed him the pistol and a bunch of sketches.
“These were drawn by him,” both of them reassured him. “If you sell these items, you’ll make a lot of money.”
The taxi driver didn’t think much of the sketches, but he had always wondered if the pistol had belonged to Rivera. Amused by the story, Carmen told him that if the sketches were indeed done by the master, they would be worth a lot more than the gun. She never found out what the taxi driver did with those possessions.
The third anecdote about Diego Rivera in San Miguel took place in the late 1940s when he visited Bellas Artes. He had come from Mexico City, where he was living. He and his companion, also an artist, were inspecting the murals of Pedro Martinez with great interest. When they came upon La Pulqueria—the mural which Cossio del Pomar had declared “a masterpiece,” Rivera’s friend exclaimed: “Now here is an impressive work. You ought to doff your hat to this one!”
Rivera did not say a word, but with a dismissive gesture, moved on. It was quite obvious that he saw the excellence of the mural before him, but acknowledging that was too much for his ego.
A few years later when Pedro Martinez moved his family to Mexico City, he was looking for work and reached out to Diego Rivera. Instead of directing him, or making connections with someone who could help, Rivera curtly told Martinez: “You are such a great artist. Why would you need my help? Go find your own work.”
Instead of lending a hand to a fellow artist in need, Rivera dismissed him, still stung by the fact that there was someone else whose work could be admired. And that, my friends, is the connection of Diego Rivera to San Miguel de Allende—three anecdotes that link the master to our city.
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