‘Deigo Rivera’s America’ at the SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) reminds us that art can matter. The survey focuses on the artist’s best work between 1920 to the mid-1940s, the height of his career.
The curator, James Oles surveys the Mexican painter’s works that are timeless and still remain relevant in 21st-century society.
“At this moment, when everybody has been traumatized by the pandemic and all the economic repercussions of it, in this world that has ecological concerns and there are continuing issues of racism and gender inequality, Rivera reminds us that art can matter,” Oles said.
From next January, ‘Diego Rivera’s America’ brings together more than 150 paintings, frescoes, and drawings. Oles jumps right into celebrating the artist’s connection to San Francisco.
“I really wanted to just jump right into his art that’s about the construction of national identity and is interested in labor and the working class,” Oles said. “This really allows us to bring together paintings from series or related pictures that have never been seen together.”
This exhibition is set to be the first of its kind in being organized by theme. Individual galleries are dedicated to suit a certain aspect of the visitors, such as craftspeople, street vendors, and mothers with children.
The exhibition culminates with a presentation of Rivera’s last U.S. mural, and his biggest portable example: a 22-by-74-foot fresco painted for San Francisco’s Golden Gate International Exposition in 1940.
Rivera’s work connects Mexico’s rich indigenous heritage with America’s more modern industrial triumphs by emphasizing the laborers that built both. That philosophy is what connects the artist’s work to today.
“A lot of Rivera’s work was about reminding the viewer, who was usually elite, of the essential importance of the working class in creating society,” he said. “We need to be reminded again and again of the fact that prosperity rests on the backs of others, most of whom don’t enjoy that same level of fortune.”
Art is medium that stands to change perception, influence societies, and become a tool that forges a better world.
