Diego Rivera (1886–1957) was born in a small Mexican town and developed an interest in art at an early age. By the time Rivera was 20, he had studied with nearly every important painter in Mexico. He also studied art in Europe, where he was strongly influenced by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. For several years, Rivera lived in Paris and created mostly Cubist paintings. But when the artist returned to Mexico in 1921, he decided to create art that celebrated the country’s native traditions. Ever since the Spanish conquered the Aztec tribes in the 1500s, Mexico’s native cultures had been devalued in favor of European traditions. Rivera’s Mexican paintings portray flower sellers and women grinding corn for tortillas. His monumental public murals pay tribute to Mexican farm laborers and factory workers.
In 1929, Rivera married Frida Kahlo, a fellow artist. The couple had a stormy relationship (they divorced in 1939 and remarried the following year). But they had similar political ideals and became part of circle of artists, writers, and activists that helped shape Mexican culture in the 1930s and 1940s. Rivera is best known for his murals, and he received many commissions to paint murals in the United States. But because of the artist’s strong Communist leanings, some of these works caused controversy. In the early 1930s, when Rivera included a portrait of Vladimir Lenin in a mural at Rockefeller Center in New York City, the Rockefellers had the work destroyed.
Flower Festival: Feast of Santa Anita may be a reference to an ancient Mexican tradition in which people dedicated flowers to the gods. The flower carrier at the center of the composition is weighed down by the enormous basket of calla lilies he carries on his back. This figure nearly fills the canvas. Women stand in the background, and three young girls kneel before him. Rivera used stylized organic shapes that give the figures the chunky, sculptural quality of pre-Columbian statues. The artist uses blocks of flat color with limited shading or modeling.