Diego Rivera Murals Reunited after 80 Years at the Museum of Modern Art

Written by Norman Rossington Sunday, 13 November 2011 00:06

NEW YORK, NY - Five murals by Mexican artist Diego Rivera will go on display on Sunday in a new exhibit that reunites works that struck a chord across a broad social spectrum when they were unveiled during the Great Depression. The works, which were first shown in 1931 and 1932, are the highlight of "Diego Rivera, Murals for The Museum of Modern Art," which opens on 13th  November and runs through May 14, 2012. The murals were painted at MoMA, which sold all but one. Museum director Glenn Lowry said the works, particularly "Frozen Assets" still find resonance today. "What is interesting about Rivera today is how prescient his observations about New York 80 years ago were," he said. "There is no better metaphor for what is taking place with the various Occupy Wall Street movements around the country and the world than the stratification that is revealed in Rivera's painting, which shows you the homeless juxtaposed with bank vaults and the wealthy," Lowry said..

Diego Rivera was the subject of MoMA’s second monographic exhibition (the first was Henri Matisse), which set new attendance records in its five-week run from December 22, 1931, to January 27, 1932. MoMA brought Rivera to New York six weeks before the exhibition’s opening and gave him studio space within the Museum, a strategy intended to solve the problem of how to present the work of this famous muralist when murals were by definition made and fixed on site. Working around the clock with two assistants, Rivera produced five “portable murals”—large blocks of frescoed plaster, slaked lime, and wood that feature bold images drawn from Mexican subject matter and address themes of revolution and class inequity. After the opening, to great publicity, Rivera added three more murals, now taking on New York subjects through monumental images of the urban working class and the social stratification of the city during the Great Depression. All eight were on display for the rest of the show’s run. The first of these panels,Agrarian Leader Zapata,is an icon in the Museum’s collection.

This exhibition will bring together key works made for Rivera’s 1931 exhibition, presenting them at MoMA for the first time in nearly 80 years. Along with mural panels, the show will include full-scale drawings, smaller working drawings, archival materials related to the commission and production of these works, and designs for Rivera’s famous Rockefeller Center mural, which he also produced while he was working at the Museum. Focused specifically on works created during the artist’s stay in New York, this exhibition will draw a succinct portrait of Rivera as a highly cosmopolitan figure who moved between Russia, Mexico, and the United States, and will offer a fresh look at the intersection of art making and radical politics in the 1930s. MoMA will be the exhibition’s sole venue

Weighing nearly 700 kg (1540 pounds), "Frozen Assets" was flown to New York after being removed from its home at the Dolores Olmedo Museum in Mexico City.

"Frozen Assets" depicts the New York skyline above tightly packed ranks of faceless and sleeping homeless men. Underneath is a spacious bank vault. Fashionably-dressed women wait with an elderly man who resembles John D. Rockefeller Jr, according to the show's curator Leah Dickerman, adding that the craggy profile of the bank clerk brings to mind John D. Rockefeller Sr.

The exhibit traces Rivera's tumultuous ties with the Rockefeller family, which commissioned him to do a mural "Man at the Crossroads" for Rockefeller Center, which was under construction.

But in 1934 the family ordered the destruction of the work-in-progress after Rivera refused to withdraw an image of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin, according to exhibit documents.

Rivera's relationship with Moscow is illustrated in the exhibit with 45 of his watercolors from his 1927-1928 sojourn in Soviet Union. While he was in Moscow he met and established a relationship with Alfred Barr, who was the first director of MOMA when it opened in 1929. It was Barr who invited Rivera to paint the murals at MOMA, which was then housed at a different location from its present site.

Of the five exhibited murals, MOMA held on to "Agrarian Leader Zapata," which shows Mexican insurgent Emiliano Zapata holding the reins of a white horse, which was modeled on an early 15th century painting from the Italian Renaissance.

The show's other murals, "Electric Power" and "The Uprising" were also brought for the show from Rivera's native Mexico and are rejoining the U.S.-held "Agrarian Leader Zapata" and "Indian Warrior."  Visit the Museum of Modern Art in New York at : www.moma.org/

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