Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art

(Hardback)

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Description

In 1931, Diego Rivera was the subject of The Museum of Modern Art's second monographic exhibition, which set attendance records in its five-week run. The Museum brought Rivera to NewYork six weeks before the opening and provided him a studio space in the building. There he produced five 'portable murals' - large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, to great publicity, Rivera added three more murals, taking on NewYork subjects through monumental images of the urban working class. Published in conjunction with an exhibition that brings together key works from Rivera's 1931 show and related material, this vividly illustrated catalogue casts the artist as a highly cosmopolitan figure who moved between Russia, Mexico and the United States and examines the intersection of art-making and radical politics in the 1930s.

Reviews

Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art, at MOMA, revisits the high tide of the artist's American success. The show reunites three of the five frescoes that Rivera created on portable supports of steel-braced cement, in 1931, for what was the museum's second solo exhibition, the first having been devoted to Matisse. It includes two other frescoes that Rivera made in New York at the time, along with studies and preparatory cartoons, documents and technical analyses.--Peter Schjeldahl "The New Yorker"

Author Bio

Leah Dickerman has been Curator in the Department of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art since 2008. Her scholarship on the historical avant-garde appears in a broad range of publications. She earned her doctorate in art history from Columbia University, and has held faculty teaching positions at Stanford University and the University of Delaware.