GALLERY

Diego Rivera is arguably one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. Like two of his Mexican contemporaries – Orozco and Siqueiros – his artistic reputation was built upon the immense scale of his public murals.

However Rivera was more than a muralist. He was a superb portrait painter, able to reveal the human character of his subjects using a brush or a pencil. And his self-portraits were witheringly honest. In 1913 when he became estranged from his conservative Mexican patron, he turned timidly to join the European movement to create modern art. Within a year he was an acknowledged leader of the second generation of cubists and had earned the admiration and friendship of Piet Mondrian and Pablo Picasso.

During the period between 1913 and 1917, Diego Rivera was an expatriate Mexican living in Paris, and one of the second generation cubists (i.e. after Picasso and Braque). Diego tried to push cubism beyond its limits, and in the process he produced produced some two hundred cubist paintings.

In his powerful and beautiful book – Diego Rivera – Pete Hamill describes the life and works of Rivera with honesty and affection. This description of the short cubist period is particularly incisive:

“In some ways, Rivera’s work was an illustration of Picasso’s line: ‘Somebody does it first, and then somebody does it pretty.’ Once he understood the essentials, Rivera’s version of cubism swiftly became very personal. He brought his own personality and vision to a series of wonderful cubist portraits of his friends and acquaintances.”

Ilya Ehrenburg – Russian poet and novelist who sat for one of his cubist portraits – described Diego as “a man of the emotions”. As he explained fifty years later in his memoirs “if sometimes he carried to absurdity the principles he cherished, it was only because the engine was powerful and there were no brakes”. His fascination with Rivera resulted in parts of the Mexican’s character being used in his first novel – Julio Jurenito (1921).

Rivera’s cubist works are quite simply, as strong as those of any other artist during the period. However, his cubist adventure was short-lived and ended precipitously after an argument with the French avant-garde poet Pierre Reverdy. Reverdy was at the time, an influential art critic who championed the early cubists and condemned all of the second generation of cubists – including Rivera.

In March of 1917 the art dealer Léonce Rosenberg organized a dinner for ‘his’1 artists at a fashionable restaurant. Reverdy – a good friend of Rosenberg’s – was also in attendance. After dinner the group retired to André Lhote’s studio. When Reverdy got on his cubist soapbox, apparently Rivera took offence and slapped him. The fight that ensued – known as “l’affaire Rivera” – resulted in smashed china, at least one broken window but, most importantly, the end of Diego’s relationship with his dealer.

After the fight Rosenberg withdrew most of Rivera’s paintings from the market. This included his masterpiece “Zapatista Landscape”, which didn’t resurface until the 1930s. In fact even the other artists ostracized him.

But perhaps this was what Rivera needed to reinvent himself outside of Picasso’s shadow. After a time spent in Italy studying thirteenth century masters of the art of the fresco, Diego returned to Mexico and reinvented himself as a marxist revolutionary – and a master muralist. Luckily for him, this happened only after the worst of the Mexican Revolution had played itself out.

Portrait of Kandinsky (1906) – Woodcut by Gabrielle Münter

Wassily Kandinsky was one of the most influential artists practicing in Europe in the first half of the 20^th century. Perhaps more than any other painter, he is credited with the shift from representational to abstract art.

The first part of the century was tumultuous both artistically and politically. Much of Kandinsky’s most original and important work was completed in Munich between 1908 and 1914. At the time Munich was the centre of a thriving artistic community.

Cover for “Der Blaue Reiter” Almanac (1911)

Kandinsky left Munich where he had emigrated from Russia in 1896, to return to Moscow and escape the First World War. However Russia was soon embroiled in the revolution of 1917. At first he worked for the revolutionary government – despite having had most his wealth appropriated by the state. When the new Soviet government became hostile to avant-garde art – presumably they were unable to control its practitioners, Kandinsky returned to Germany in 1922.

He had secured a teaching position there at the new Weimar Bauhaus. By 1933 however, the newly-elected Nazis had taken power and closed the Bauhaus. Kandinsky’s art was labelled ‘degenerate’ and he once again had to flee – this time to Paris.

Kandinsky remained in Paris until his death from arterioschlerosis in 1944. He was 78 at the time – and continued to work until a few months before his death. During his lifetime he was enormously prolific, and has left us with a stunning legacy that chronicles the evolution from a late nineteenth-century artistic sensibility with its ties to an ‘objective’ world, into abstraction…

GALLERIES

TALKING TO KANDINSKY – A One-Act Play