Visual art
Diego Rivera
1886–1957 · painter, muralist
Mexican muralist who painted the Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Arts in 1932–33, the city's most celebrated work of art.
- Born
Guanajuato, Mexico- Died
Mexico City, Mexico
aged 70- Birth name
- Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez
- Detroit years
- 1932–1933
- Field
- Visual art
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Rivera arrived in Detroit in April 1932 at the invitation of DIA director William Valentiner, with Edsel Ford paying for the commission. He spent weeks sketching inside Ford's River Rouge plant in Dearborn, filling notebooks with blast furnaces, conveyor lines and the men who worked them. What began as a request for two panels grew into 27 fresco panels covering all four walls of the museum's Garden Court, painted between July 1932 and March 1933. The cycle sets the auto industry beside images of the earth's resources, modern science and the peoples of the world. When it was unveiled, clergy and local politicians attacked it as irreverent and communist, and some demanded that it be whitewashed, but Edsel Ford and the museum stood by it. The room is now called Rivera Court, and the murals were named a National Historic Landmark in 2014. During the project Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived across Woodward Avenue in the Wardell apartment hotel.
Highlights
- Detroit Industry: 27 fresco panels in the DIA's Garden Court, 1932–33
- Commission arranged by William Valentiner and paid for by Edsel Ford
- Sketched for weeks inside the Ford River Rouge plant in Dearborn
- Murals designated a National Historic Landmark in 2014
- Subject of the DIA exhibition Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Detroit (2015)
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 3
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Worked here · 1932–1933
Concert of Colors
The former Garden Court where he painted the 27 Detroit Industry fresco panels; the murals remain on view in what is now Rivera Court.
Lived here · 1932–1933
Chartreuse Kitchen & Cocktails
Rivera and Kahlo rented a furnished apartment in the Wardell, facing the DIA; the building is now the Park Shelton condominiums.
Related place · 1932
Ford River Rouge Complex
Ford's giant Dearborn plant, where Rivera spent weeks sketching the machines and workers that fill the Detroit Industry murals.