Country's Tangible Resources

Diego Rivera & Alameda Central

Considered one of the greatest artists on the world stage, Rivera entered the Academy of San Carlos at ten years of age. Immediately, his artistic abilities astonished his teachers. In 1907, following his first solo show, the government of Veracruz was awarded a scholarship with which he traveled to Spain. In 1908 he moved to Paris Rivera. The following year he met the Russian painter Angelina Beloff, who became his first wife.

With the theme of Creation, in 1922, Rivera executed in High School (Bolivar Amphitheatre) National School his first mural. 15 more will follow , are made in Mexico and the United States, like the controversial Man at the Crossroads (1933 ) , conducted for the Rockefeller Center in New York and soon destroyed by him included a portrait of Lenin. However, Anahuacalli hosts the original sketches.

Along with his famous partner Frida Kahlo, whom he married in 1929, Rivera takes an intense political and cultural life. In 1944 he painted his famous painting Nude with Calla Lilies. With a major exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts, in 1949 he was honored for his 50 years of artistic work.

In July 1954 Frida died. Wanting to keep his memory alive, Rivera decided to create the Frida Kahlo Museum. In 1955 he was diagnosed with cancer muralist. Despite his illness, he works with vigor. According to his own design, and supported by the architect Juan O'Gorman, focuses on the construction of Anahuacalli.

The Alameda Central was created in the sixteenth century by the Viceroy Luis de Velasco, who ordered "a walk to give beauty to the city and was once the playground of its inhabitants" was created. Thus a large number of aspen trees in the Eastern limit of the then young colonial town south of Santa Veracruz Temple and were seeded limited by current Hidalgo and Juarez Avenues. In view of the slow growth of poplars was decided to remove them and plant ash and willow in its place because of its rapid development. However Alameda name lasted until today.

This great painting tells the history of Mexico, from the period of the Conquest until 1940, so that in 1947 the garden known as Alameda Central in Mexico City, he was caught in a colorful dream in a before white wall Hotel del Prado, designed by architect Carlos Obregon Santacilia. The mural called Dream of a Sunday in the Alameda or Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park is a historical overview, review and beautifully illustrated history of Mexico, from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century.

The mural is composed of three sections, the first, starting with the left shows scenes of conquest and colonization and also reflects major events of the nineteenth century, such as Independence, the U.S. invasion, the 11 presidential terms of General Santa Anna and European intervention. The second part of the central figures of Diego Rivera and the Skull evokes the Diaz era. Finally the third evokes peasant movements and popular struggles that culminated in the 1910 Revolution.

Cultural & Political Impact…

He captured moments of political and social life in the history of Mexico, a Mexico seen through past centuries, where Alameda was an eyewitness to many events. People didn´t know most of all these historical events until Rivera’s mural appeared and thanks to this artistic way of expression, Mexicans started to figure history out by the drawing.

HISTORICAL DIMENSION What period of history of Mexico does the artist and the work’s elements belong?

Rivera started the mural in 1947 commissioned by the architect Carlos Obregon Santacilia to decorate one of the walls of the hall Versailles in the hotel del Prado. In conducting the work, Rivera uses the space of a saturated manner, managing two plans, the real and the dreamed one, plans where several of the characters evoke memories through sleep. Pictorially the evocation of dreams is reconstructed through a split in the image displayed in the blanks. Diego Rivera's mural measures 4.70 x 15.60 mts. and weighs 35 tons, including a metal structure

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