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Diego Rivera Paintings:      DiegotoIrene1941f.JPG (12794 bytes)

Diego Rivera:  Self-Portrait dedicated to Irene Rich, 1941

Keywords:  Diego Rivera, Lenin in 1922, Frida Kahlo, Lenin

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HouseoverBridgec09d.JPG (18934 bytes)

House over the Bridge, 1909

 

Maugard_1913b.JPG (27567 bytes)

Portrait of Adolfo Best Maugard, 1913

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Zapatista1915.JPG (28729 bytes)

Zapatista Landscape - The Guerrilla, 1915

 

LaMolendera1924b.JPG (26054 bytes)

La Molendera, 1924

 

Flower_Day_1925b.JPG (30286 bytes)

Flower Day, 1925

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Lenin_in_1922f.JPG (15195 bytes)

Lenin in 1922 (?), 1928 (?)

We belive that Diego Rivera finished this portrait of Lenin in Moscow in 1928, about four years after Andre Breton had written the Manifesto of Surrealism.  The painting is surrealistic because:

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Lenin would often wear a cap, but his cap always had a shade!  The hat Lenin is wearing in the portrait could have been Andre Breton's in 1924!

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Lenin, being Felix's boss (Cheka), knew everything, but his ears were still normal size!

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Lenin looks good in the portrait, but in reality he rarely looked people straight into their eyes...

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Lenin would wear a suit and his father's heavy fur coat, but never a nice uniform.  Never!

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Nice officer uniforms doesn't have numbers on them; prisoners have numbers.  But prisoners in the Gulag system wore filthy clothes, with three large white number tags.

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Bolsheviks had red stars, not dots!

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Diego's portrait of Lenin must have been troublesome in Moscow in 1928, because it truly contradicted the Soviet idea that the purpose of art was to promote The State and its causes.  Diego's later portraits of Lenin did not retain quite the surrealistic flair of the original Lenin!

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BaileTehuantepec1928b.JPG (35462 bytes)

Baile en Tehuantepec, 1928

 

CalaLilies_1944b.JPG (43556 bytes)

Nude with Calla Lilies, 1944

 

Ruth_Rivera_1949b.JPG (19736 bytes)

Portrait of Ruth Rivera, 1949

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May_Day_1956b.JPG (45478 bytes)

May Day Procession in Moscow, 1956

 

Andrea Kettenmann, Rivera, Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, p12, p17, p44, p56, p87, p90, 1997

Patrick Marnham, Dreaming with his Eyes open..., Alfred A. Knopf, p242, 1998

Mike Venezia, Diego Rivera, Childrens Press, p15, 1994

 

FridaKahlo1929c.JPG (15108 bytes)

I'm Frida Kahlo, and I love Diego!

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Lenin_1918.JPG (8638 bytes) rivera_lenin1922.JPG (12894 bytes)

I'm Lenin, the Founder of The Soviet UnionDiego Rivera was my best Mexican Fan!