Diego Rivera's Glorious Victory

One of Mexico's most famous artist, Diego Rivera, painted in the cubist style know by most as the style of Picaso, as well as in mural form. Rivera's paintings are both fasinating explorations in color and contrast, shape and expectation, and for us, history and culture. One of Rivera's most infamous murals, Glorious Victory, was painted in 1954, then tought to be lost for 50 years, only to emerge in Russia in the hands of the Puskin Museum of Moscow.



The Glorious Victory mural as shown above is rich with context and politics. A nice analysis of the mural can be found on Mark Vallen's Art for a Change blog.

A recent New York Times review of a 2007 exhibit in Mexico that featured Glorious Victory fills in more detail about this missing mural and others such as this one titled, Guerra Mundial.


from New York Times

This work emerges from earlier work done by Jose Guadalupe Posada - for more see Art of the Print.



Read more about Rivera's politics and art in this online description of a 2004 exhibit at the National Gallery of Art titled, The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera: Memory, Politics, Place.


National Gallery of Art - http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/rivera/revolution.shtm

Another, tangently related, online exhibit from the Library of Congress called MONSTROUS CRAWS & CHARACTER FLAWS: Masterpieces of Cartoon and Caricature at the Library of Congress

This fascinating exhibit features art as social commentary inlcuding this work by Miguel Covarrubias, titled Impossible interviews - no. 18: Herr Adolf Hitler and Huey S. "Hooey" Long versus Josef Stalin and Benito Mussolini.