A Sea of Stories Diego Rivera

A Sea of Stories Text

Lolita Bosch Illustrations

Aitana Carrasco

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Diego Rivera

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W

ell over a century ago, in 1886, a

that he wanted everything for everyone

a twin and one of the longest

home. He also knew that what interested

boy was born in Mexico. He had

names in the world: Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao

de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez.

He and his brother were born in the beauti-

ful city of Guanajuato, situated in the middle of the country, and they were the first

children of Don Diego, a schoolteacher, and Doña Pilar, who spent her days looking after

the small, underweight twins with health

problems. In fact, they were so poorly that one of the twins died and Diego was left

alone with his parents. They could not bear

to live so close to the place of their loss, so

they left their native Guanajuato and moved to the bustling capital, Mexico City. It was

1892, the last years of the 19th century and,

as always happens when the century is

drawing to a close, people were more scared than usual and did things they perhaps wouldn’t have done at other times.

In Mexico there were struggles between those who wanted everything for a few people and those who wanted everything

for everyone, even if they had to be a little

poorer. Revolution was in the air, but Diego was hardly thinking about all that. He was

just six years old and he already knew

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because that is what he had learned at

him most was art. Diego was a wise, rotund boy who knew things as animals

know things: because they just do. He had

the innate ability to see everything as though it were transparent. He saw a brighter future for his country beyond the battles; he saw the beauty of tradition

beyond the disparaged indigenous peoples, who lived in wretched poverty; and he found love in every corner of the world.

I am of the people, he would have said. He wanted to grow as an individual and learn to have a more powerful imagination. Diego

searched where nobody else looked, in

the roots of trees and the customs of the indigenous peoples. He converted all

that we are into enormous murals that are like stories you can read as you walk or into immense sculptures that would

gradually occupy sites all over the country.

But that was yet to come. When Diego Rivera was little, he discovered that art was the perfect means to express his gratitude

for life. He gave thanks for Mexico’s artistic heritage, for the beauty, the silent, humble and perfect wisdom of the indigenous peoples, and for such a magical country.

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Death had finally caught up with the monu-

from this truth that we have created

bull, wisdom in his being, infinite curiosity

this incredibly artistic country. He painted

mental artist, the man with the body of a

between us all as we weave the history of

and a love of love. He was the definitive re­

the conquest of Mexico and he painted the

fellow artists David Alfaro Siquieros and

he painted the festivals, the trades and the

presentative of Mexican muralism, alongside José Clemente Orozco. A man who changed

our way of creating and thinking about art with gigantic murals we can read as we walk

because they belong to everyone, not just a few. The boy with a rotund body who knew

how to see the absolute magic behind the indigenous poverty. Who knew how to see

the eternal hands of European artisans

behind the avant-garde artists. The twin who

had survived and who paid homage to the

Revolution in everything he did. The painter who

managed, almost for the first time in Mexico, to inspire an extraordinary respect for its

pre-Hispanic artistic past and popular art. He who would have said, “I am of the people.”

He was never handsome, but large and

powerful. He invented an art that rescued the history of the Mexican people with

realist scenes, bright colours and figures

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first Mexican to fly in a hot air balloon; customs, the peasants, the revolutionaries

and the artists. He created murals nearly 500 metres long in which he wanted to preserve everything, to save our memory of

Mexico. Not just its beauty, but the immensity of the country and its traditions.

The boy with the longest name in Mexico

died having painted frescoes in the National

Palace, where presidents now work. He covered entire walls with nostalgia, modernity and the future. He depicted the tireless

struggle which managed to expel the Spanish colony from Mexico to make us a

free country. He portrayed the oppression of

the indigenous peoples and the peasants.

His art held a disguised mockery of all those

who had always wanted to have everything

for themselves, the dictators and despots who had governed Mexico so often.

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