Diego Rivera: Pride of México

Diego Rivera's social activism reaches Asia via 34 works by the renowned artist to be exhibited through December 9th on the fifth floor of China's National Art Museum. The show Diego Rivera: Pride of Mexico has the city of Beijing as its first destination, and it features works by the great Mexican muralist belonging to the state of Veracruz, ranging from landscapes made in 1904 to figurative drawings dated 1956, as well as three emblematic murals created by the artist. Although this is the first time that this collection from the state of Veracruz reaches the Asian continent, already in 2006 an exhibition in Shanghai included Rivera's work, and this is why the Director of China's National Art Museum, Wu Weishan, says that "the Chinese public is familiar with the artist," especially with his murals. During the show's opening, Wu also praised Rivera's various creative periods, visible in the different techniques he employed: oil paint, watercolors, collage, and drawings in pencil, charcoal or ink, and expressed his desire to see artists like him "bloom Chinese culture." Mexico's ambassador to China, Julián Ventura, says that "the relationship between the two countries goes beyond numbers: culture is a great platform for increased closeness." He coincides with Wu in the fact that Rivera's murals are appealing to Chinese audiences "also for their ideological content, since he forged his identity as an artist in the earliest Twentieth Century social movement, the Mexican Revolution of 1910." Diego Rivera adhered to a communist ideology and was known for the social content of his murals—among them the mural destroyed in 1933 by John D. Rockefeller Jr. at the Center that carries his family name, because it portrayed Lenin. His political profiles "gives him a special resonance in this country," notes Julián Ventura. The show will remain open through December 9 and could become the first in a series of cultural exchanges between Mexico and China, offering Chinese audiences an opportunity to encounter more of Mexico's art.