Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945
Feb 17, 2020–Jan 31, 2021
Rivera and the New Deal
5
Diego Rivera came to the United States in 1930 as the most acclaimed artist to have worked on the Mexican government’s public mural program—the “hero of the Western world,” one critic called him. After completing three murals in San Francisco, he was commissioned in 1932 to create what became a twenty-seven-panel mural cycle filling all four walls of the covered courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts. In Mexico, Rivera had been known as a Communist whose murals glorified the revolution and condemned capitalist corruption. His encounter in the United States with modern industry catalyzed his embrace of an altogether different subject matter: the abundance of the country’s natural resources and its engineering and industrial achievements. The theme of productive labor had tremendous resonance for American artists across the geographic and political spectrum working under the auspices of the various mural programs established by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt as part of his New Deal initiatives to promote economic recovery. For these artists, who were seeking to assure the nation of its self-worth as it grappled with the devastating fallout caused by the Great Depression, Rivera’s art was an inspiring model. They adopted Rivera’s subject matter and his decorative, descriptive style, crowded imagery, multiple vanishing points, and montage aesthetic in the thousands of murals they created in public buildings across the country.
Examine the many intricate details of Rivera's Detroit Institute of Arts mural cycle by zooming into images of the courtyard's north and south walls, and see the work in its entirety in this rotating panorama of the space. Photography by David Mariotti.
Diego Rivera, Lower panel of Detroit Industry, North Wall, 1932–33
Diego Rivera, Lower panel of Detroit Industry, North Wall, 1932–33. Fresco, 17 ft. 8 1/2 in. × 45 ft. (5.4 × 13 m). Detroit Institute of the Arts; gift of Edsel B. Ford 33.10.N. © 2019 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Artists
- Charles Henry Alston
- Ramón Alva Guadarrama
- Lola Álvarez Bravo
- Luis Arenal
- Belle Baranceanu
- Will Barnet
- Carleton Beals
- Thomas Hart Benton
- Henry Bernstein
- Emil Bisttram
- Julius Bloch
- Lucienne Bloch
- Anita Brenner
- Jacob Burck
- Elizabeth Catlett
- Stuart Chase
- Howard Cook
- Miguel Covarrubias
- Aaron Douglas
- Sergei Eisenstein
- Jesús Escobedo
- Philip Evergood
- Seymour Fogel
- Ford Motor Company
- Hugo Gellert
- Xavier Gonzalez
- Marion Greenwood
- William Gropper
- Philip Guston
- Eitarō Ishigaki
- María Izquierdo
- Everett Gee Jackson
- Joe Jones
- Frida Kahlo
- Jacob Lawrence
- Harold Lehman
- Michael Lenson
- Mardonio Magaña
- Bendor Mark
- Fletcher Martin
- Leopoldo Méndez
- Carlos Mérida
- Edward Millman
- Tina Modotti
- Roberto Montenegro
- Emilio Gómez Muriel
- Hideo Benjamin Noda
- José Clemente Orozco
- Jackson Pollock
- Alfredo Ramos Martínez
- Anton Refregier
- Diego Rivera
- Ben Shahn
- Henrietta Shore
- Mitchell Siporin
- David Alfaro Siqueiros
- Harry Sternberg
- Paul Strand
- Thelma Johnson Streat
- Rufino Tamayo
- Edward Weston
- Charles White
- Hale Aspacio Woodruff