Who is the man in this painting?

The painting is signed by D Rivera, and studying Diego Rivera's work, we have found a bald gentleman sporting a reddish beard, in the mural "Man, Controller of the Universe", which we show a detail of below:

Detail from the "Man, Controller of the Universe" mural in Mexico City, painted in 1934.

The man in the center is Lenin, symbolically clasping the hands of a black American, a white Russian soldier, and a worker, as allies of the future.  The mural is a reconstruction of another mural in the Rockefeller Center in Radio City, which was destroyed after a major political fracas.  Basically, it was politically unacceptable to depict Lenin, the preeminent founder of the Soviet Union, as the center of the inevitable alliance between the Russian and American (people).  Below is a (b/w) detail from the original mural, showing the portrait of Lenin on which opposition to Diego Rivera's mural was focused:

Diego's portrait of Lenin in the Rockefeller Center, mural smashed to pieces February 9, 1934.

Although Diego Rivera was interested in the Russian movement towards revolution since he was about ten, it appears that this interest was developed further during the period in Europe, when he was with Angeline Beloff, a beutiful Russian painter in exile.   We notice that in 1920 he was a friend of David Sternberg, the Soviet People's Commissar of the Fine Arts, and in 1922, in Mexico, Diego joined the Communist Party.   It does not appear that Diego knew Lenin first hand, still, Diego had a fascination with the fight for freedom of the workers, and Lenin was the natural leader for this cause.

We presume that Diego made the portrait believed to be of Lenin, in connection with his eight month long trip in to Moscow in 1927, to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the October Revolution.  Since Lenin, the late leader of the Revolution, had become a glorious icon, he was the natural target for a portrait.   Several other painters had tried to make a portrait of Lenin while he was still alive, but without much success.  In 1927 we believe Diego may have visited Lenin's mausoleum, but otherwise a portrait of Lenin must have been done from pictures at this time.

Lenin, October 1918

Consider that Diego Rivera might have experienced something like this:

There's Lenin, our Hero, who died January 21st, 1924...  Why did he die - he was only 54?  He got sick in 1922, and then he died less than two years later...  But what did he die from?  Well, we don't really know...

Lenin's illness was not very public.  The nature of his illness was largely suppressed for the Russian people, and most of the pictures published in those days were rather official looking.  The communist leadership did not want to admit that Lenin, their visionary and leader, was somewhat lost and rather incapacitated after his serious strokes in 1922 and 1923.  After Dmitri Volkogonovs book published in 1994, a better picture of Lenins illness is available.

We believe that Diego, through snooping around, formed a picture of what really happened with Lenin, and that is what he painted:

Lenin, the bolshevik general, was imprisoned by strokes in 1922.  His eyes were sunken in due to age, and he has a philosophical, rather than determined, look.  He is wearing a roomy hat that contains cold wraps to suppress pains from headaches.

Below is a picture of Lenin taken in 1896 by the St. Petersburg police, when Lenin was about 26years old:

Police photograph of Lenin after his arrest in St. Petersburg in 1896.

In the autumn of 1920, when Lenin was about 50 years old and the Soviet leader, he was photographed in his Kremlin flat with several relatives, and below we show a detail:

Lenin (in his Kremlin flat), autumn 1920.

This was Lenin at the top of his career, and images from this period occurs in several posters.  Such posters were made in conjunction with the ten year anniversary of the Russian Revolution in October 1917, and in conjunction with the five year anniversary of Lenin's death in January 1924.  Below is a poster portrait of Lenin:

Lenin at about 50, poster (not dated).

Late summer of 1923 Lenin was at his country estate at Gorki, where he spent much of his time in his rattan wheelchair:

Lenin in his wheelchair at Gorki July or August 1923.

Andrea Kettenmann, "Rivera", Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, 1997, p55.

Diego Rivera, "MY ART, MY LIFE   An Autobiography", Dover Publications, p66.

Dmitri Volkogonov, "LENIN   a new biography", The Free Press, 1994, p88.

Ronald W. Clark, "LENIN   a biography", Harper & Row Publishers, 1988, p308.

Dmitri Volkogonov, "LENIN   a new biography", The Free Press, 1994, p408.

Lenin, the Bolshevik Leader

Diego Rivera: The Agitator