style="font-size:15px;"> 40. Diego Rivera, Woman with a Red Shawl, 1920.
Oil on canvas, 80 × 75 cm.
Private collection, Mexico City.
Diego’s show was extended to December 20th, and then the Academy de San Carlos was cleaned out. Thirteen of the thirty-five paintings were sold, bringing the artist 4,000 pesos. He saw to it that borrowed paintings were returned to Don Dehesa in Jalapa, purchases were wrapped and delivered to Doña Carmelita Díaz, and the rest stored. After all the weeks of being feted in Mexico City, being the toast of the town, the conquering hero, he could no longer stay there. He knew he had to return to Paris and meet up with Angelina again, this time with some money in his pockets.
He gathered his bags and his paints, said his goodbyes and left Mexico City on January 3rd, 1910 – not for Paris, but, according to a letter sent to Angelina in March, for a small village two hours away by train named Amecameca. There he remained, painting landscapes, taking stock of his “success” and yearning for Angeline. All around him the Revolution gained strength. Peons ambushed and hacked to pieces platoons of Rurales for their weapons and ammunition. Armouries were looted. Small boys fired long rifles as they ran against the bayonets and artillery of Díaz’ regular army. Dabbing away in Amecameca, Rivera feared that the awkward imposition of the Revolution might interfere with the postal service, and his endearments might not reach his “Angel” in far off St Petersburg.
Having the documented evidence of Rivera’s movements and associations during this 1910 to 1911 period, the self-portrait he painted of the “revolutionary” and “patriot” Diego Rivera years later during this explosive time in Mexico’s history makes for wonderful fiction. In later years when he had once again become the artistic symbol of Mexico and needed to show his street credentials to the latest regime, his part in the Mexican Revolution between 1911 and 1920 became a lusty tale of adventure.
Beginning with his arrival in Mexico City for the exhibition of his work, the event became cloaked in mystical portent. First he claimed that his mother had not learned of his arrival in Mexico City. He wanted to “surprise” his emotionally fragile mother after four years absence. While she gushed tears and flung open her arms at his triumphant arrival, the reunion came to a sudden halt at the appearance of the mystical old crone, the Indian nurse to whom he’d been fobbed off to be healed as a child. She had dreamed of his arrival and walked for eight days to greet him. “Twice as tall and twice as beautiful as my real mother”, she and Diego confronted each other in the family house. Diego made his way upstairs to his former room and there, Blackie, his faithful dog, now crippled with age, greeted him. The aged mutt dragged himself up onto Diego’s lap, licked his master’s hand – and contentedly died.
It seemed as though a guiding hand of mystical protection keeping him out of the army’s gun sights and busy firing squads now ruled his life. Finding time while preparing his show, Diego plotted to assassinate Porfirio Díaz with a bomb concealed in his large sombrero. Unfortunately, a general and fellow plotter arrived on time for their lunch date to seal the deal, and dug into the frijoles. Diego arrived late to see the general thrashing out the last minutes of his life on the cantina floor after a generous poisoning by Díaz’ secret police. Being late saved Rivera’s life. He adopted that for future appointments.
The bomb components then migrated in his paint box to his exhibition, timed to detonate as the President admired Diego’s paintings. When the President’s comely wife showed up at the grand opening instead, the plot, like the bomb, fizzled out.
With his zeal to fight for the proletariat against the imperialists and capitalists unfulfilled, Diego saddled up and spent six months galloping into battle at the side of Emiliano Zapata and his southern army. Diego’s speciality was blowing trains off their tracks with explosives, but without harming a single passenger. However, as bullets whistled above the battle, Diego’s friends tore him from Zapata’s side and told the painter to leave Mexico or end up facing a Díaz firing squad as his name was on the presidential death list.
Regretting his departure from the class war of the peasants, he fled to Jalapa and bid a tearful farewell to his old patron, Don Dehesa. While there, waiting for the packet to France, revolutionary insurgents surrounded the capital. Diego served his patron one last time acting as a negotiator between the Don and the revolutionaries until he was certain Dehesa’s life would be spared.
Even his departure from his native land brought down the fury and mystical hand of the gods as the wheezing steamship Alfonso XIII battled its way through an Atlantic storm. In his overheated imagination, which benefited from numerous re-tellings of the story, Diego supposedly took command of the cargo hold where, with whips and a pistol, he forced the cringing crew to shift cargo and maintain the ship’s even keel until they were safe.
Back to reality, the only thing actually gaining an even keel was Diego Rivera’s self analysis of his level of talent and potential ability to change direction. While parked safely behind his easel in Amecameca peering at the volcano Popocatépetl, Rivera came to some half-baked decisions that Angelina had been right to dislike The Breton Girl painting done in the Flemish manner and his other work done in other styles. Looking at the sweeping snow-capped volcanic mountain range spread before him, the sun-drenched colours of the fresh spring foliage at his feet, crowns of yellow flowers that capped the cacti of the high desert, he knew where he had to find this new direction for his art. He packed his paints and headed back to his hostel where he prepared to leave for Paris.
41. Diego Rivera, Adoration of the Virgin, 1912–1913.
Oil and encaustic on canvas, 150 × 120 cm.
María Rodríguez de Reyero Collection, New York.
His New Exil to Europe or His Artistic Quest
42. Diego Rivera, The Eiffel Tower, 1914.
Oil on canvas, 115 × 92 cm.
Private collection.
The Eight Year Search – 1911–1919
Angelina Beloff should have known better. When Diego said in a telegram that he had docked in Spain, he didn’t mean that he intended to rush to the next ship bound for Le Havre. In his mind, it meant that he had arrived in Spain, and it was time to visit old friends, take a tour of the Prado, and down a couple of casks of fine sherry during evenings in Madrid’s nightspots.
Angelina had rented a studio near the Montparnasse Metro station at 52 avenue du Maine, and sat down to wait. The wait extended into anxiety, until one day he calmly strolled in and told her of the great time he’d had in Madrid. There was no apology or remorse but she was so happy to see him that their life together picked up where it had left off, and their pact to marry resurfaced. There is no public record of an official civil or church wedding, and Diego always claimed their union was of the so-called “common-law” type. Whatever the mechanics of their relationship, it began in happiness for them both.
Angelina had rented the studio next to the Académie Russe for the hoard of young Russian artists who desired art training. She talked to them in Russian, taught a few classes, and enjoyed their company when Diego was deep into his work. He finished two paintings of the volcano Iztaccihuatl and sent them off to the Salon d’automne. They were promptly ignored. There was a buzz in the air still reverberating from the spring Salon des Indépendants he had just missed because of his sojourn in Amecameca. Cubism was being challenged and defended in every café on the Left Bank. Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon and André Lhote had exhibited
