Diego Rivera (33)


Source: WTL research files.
Painting: "Nude with Calla Lilies" (oil on masonite, 1944).
Comments: After 1935, Rivera painted 10 different canvases featuring calla lilies, like musical variations on a theme or like Picasso's 48 paintings of "Las meninas" (after Velázquez). For an earlier painting on this theme, see: <= Diego Rivera #9. The model for this painting was a woman named Nieves.
Biographical data: In 1939, Trotsky splits from Rivera; Frida Kahlo goes from New York to Paris, and then she and her husband divorce. In 1940, Rivera goes to San Francisco paints a mural in the San Francisco City College. In the same year, Trotsky is assassinated in Mexico City, and Frida and Diego are reunited and remarried in San Francisco. In 1941 and 1942, he excutes murals in Santa Barbara, California, before returning to Mexico to continue work in the Palacio Nacional. In 1942, Mexico declares war on Germany, while Rivera begins construction of Anahuacalli, his Xanadu-type mansion, museum, and mausoleum in the suburbs of Mexico City. In this residence he amasses a collection of over 60,000 pieces of pre-Columbian objet d'art. In 1944, Rivera teaches art at the Escuela Nacional de Pintura y Escultura la Esmeralda. He researches pre-Columbian codices, he rereads Bernal Díaz del Castillo's chronicle, The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, and he paints the work seen above.
Humanities questions: (A) Compare and contrast this painting from 1944 with the earlier one painted 19 years earlier. Take into consideration similarities and differences in terms of prevailing æsthetic norms and schools, political situations, and Rivera's personal life. (B) Comment on the use of color, form, and texture. (C) How realistic is this painting? (D) How modern is it?