(1886–1957). Mexican artist Diego Rivera is known for creating large and colorful murals, or wall paintings. These stunning artworks still exist in Mexico and the United States. Rivera's murals tell stories and express the artist's opinions of world events.

Early life

Diego Rivera was born on December 8, 1886, in Guanajuato, Mexico. His family moved to Mexico City in 1892. When he was 10, he earned a scholarship that allowed him to study art at the Academy of San Carlos. His teachers included some of Mexico's best artists.

Rivera's early paintings, mostly landscapes and human figures, were praised. In 1907 he was again given a scholarship, allowing him to travel to Europe. Rivera studied art in Spain until 1909, when he moved to Paris, France. There he began painting in a style called Cubism, a kind of art that breaks apart the subject into geometrical shapes, such as squares, triangles, and circles.

Career

By the time World War I began in 1914, Rivera's artwork was known to audiences in France, Spain, Mexico, and the United States. In about 1917 his artistic style changed. Influenced by French painter Paul Cézanne, Rivera began using simple forms and bold areas of color.

In 1920 Rivera traveled to Italy, where he studied Renaissance frescoes, great works of art that were painted directly onto plaster walls hundreds of years earlier. The next year Rivera returned to his homeland of Mexico, where a long revolution had just ended. He and fellow Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros hoped to create a new national art: They wanted to decorate Mexico's buildings with paintings that would tell the stories of the people's difficult struggles.

Rivera completed his first mural in 1923. He soon received other commissions, or special requests, to paint the walls of public buildings, such as the Ministry of Education and the National Palace. He was deeply impressed by the character and beauty of Mexico's native people. In pictures, Rivera narrated Mexico's stormy history, telling of its culture, farming and industry, wars, and politics. His murals feature bright colors, clearly outlined figures, and shallow, or flat-looking, spaces. The paintings are crowded with people and symbols.

Between 1930 and 1934 Rivera painted murals in the United States. But he stirred a great controversy in New York City, where, in a mural at Rockefeller Center, he painted an image of Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin. Those who had asked Rivera to paint the work were offended by this and they ordered that the mural be destroyed. That mural, called Man at the Crossroads, was later recreated by Rivera, who painted it in its entirety in Mexico City. He died on November 25, 1957, in Mexico City.