My Art, My Life

by Diego Rivera

  Thaelmann and Muenzenberg only laughed louder. Muenzenberg complimented me on my artist’s vivid imagination.

  “You must be joking,” he said. “Haven’t you heard Hitler talk? Haven’t you understood the stupidities I translated for you?”

  I replied, “But these idiocies are also in the heads of his audience, maddened by hunger and fear. Hitler is promising them a change, economic, political, cultural, and scientific. Well, they want changes, and he may be able to do just what he says, since he has all the capitalist money behind him. With that he can give food to the hungry German workers and persuade them to go over to his side and turn on us. Let me shoot him, at least. I’ll take the responsibility. He’s still within range.”

  But this made my German comrades laugh still harder. After laughing himself out, Thaelmann said, “Of course it’s best to have someone always ready to liquidate the clown. Don’t worry, though. In a few months he’ll be finished, and then we’ll be in a position to take power.”

  This only depressed me more, and I reiterated my fears. By now, Muenzenberg wasn’t smiling. He had been watching Hitler, then nearly at the other end of the square. He had noticed that the crowd was still applauding. Before leaving the square, Hitler turned and gave the Nazi salute. Instead of boos, the applause swelled. It was clear that Hitler had won many followers among these left-wing workers. Muenzenberg suddenly turned pale and clutched my arm.

  Thaelmann looked surprised at both of us. Then he smiled wanly and patted my head. In Russian, which sounded thick in his German accent, he said, “Nitchevo, nitchevo.”—“It’s nothing, nothing at all.”

  My “crazy” artist’s imagination was later bitterly substantiated. Both Thaelmann and my friend Muenzenberg were among the millions of human beings put to death by the “clown” we had watched in the square that day.

  STALIN

  WHEN I LEFT BERLIN, it was as one of a large heterogeneous company. Railroad workers, rough and jolly. Miners, silent and strong, looking at the world with eyes accustomed to darkness. Textile workers, quiet, acute, funmakers with unbelievably dextrous fingers. Professional revolutionaries who stayed up to discuss Marxist theory while the rest of us slept. Writers, like the wonderful Theodore Dreiser and Henri Barbusse, were there. The four-foot-tall Moroccan rebel sultan, Abdel Krim, who spoke nearly every language in the world with amusing incoherence. North and South Americans of all ages. Beautiful Czechoslovak working girls, and always at my side, a former shoeshine boy who had been tutored by Lenin himself—Willi Muenzenberg.

  The morning we arrived in the Moscow terminal, the ground was covered with ice. A high Soviet official, named Peskovsky, was at the station to welcome us. His face shone with friendliness and joy when we came into view. He greeted the Mexican delegation in the Mexican way, embracing each of us in turn.

  My friend Guadalupe Rodríguez was dressed in a Mexican charro (cowboy) outfit, topped with a tall black sombrero. Impressed by his colorful manner and appearance, Peskovsky took him under his wing. All of us delegates paraded out of the terminal in a triumphal procession, led by Peskovsky and Rodríguez. The bystanders stared and smiled at Rodríguez.

  At the exit we found ourselves at the high end of a long, steep ramp covered entirely by a smooth sheet of ice. Rodriguez stepped ahead, unaware of the hazard. Peskovsky paled and made a warning motion but too late. Without losing his hat, Rodriguez began to travel down the ramp on his posterior, his face calm and immobile. Somehow, he managed to maintain his dignity through all that long slide. At the end of the ramp, a couple of soldiers with blue ribbons in their hats tried to help him up. Motioning them aside, Rodríguez jumped up by himself as agilely as if he were dismounting a horse.

  People must have thought this a proper way for a guest from a mythical country to enter Moscow, for they applauded heartily, shouting, “Hooray!”

  Peskovsky regained his color then, his face even becoming red with pleasure over this happy ending, and he responded with a loud, “Viva México!” Thanks to the unique way the delegate guest from Mexico had chosen to arrive, international cordiality rose to a new height.

  I shall never forget my first sight in Moscow of the organized marching and movement of people. An early morning snow was falling in the streets. The marching mass was dark, compact, rhythmically united, elastic. It had the floating motion of a snake, but it was more awesome than any serpent I could imagine. It flowed slowly from the narrow streets into the open squares without end. At the head of this winding, undulating creature mass was a group in the form of an enormous locomotive. A big red star and five picks were over the “cylinder” of the “boiler.” The “headlight” was an enormous inscription between two red flags: THE UNIONS ARE THE LOCOMOTIVES MOVING THE TRAIN OF THE REVOLUTION. THE CORRECT REVOLUTIONARY THEORY IS THE STEEL TRACK.

  During the three hours that I withstood the icy winds, watching this procession, I drew many sketches for water colors. About fifty of these were afterwards purchased by Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

  One night we delegates were instructed to get up at seven the next morning and assemble at the Central Committee building at a quarter to eight. An important meeting was to begin at eight.

  When we appeared next morning at the Central Committee building, we were escorted into an enormous room. From one of its three huge glass windows, I could see the Kremlin in the foreground and the city spreading behind it. Moscow seemed as large as the sea, misty, with the forms of the buildings dissolving into the horizon. The colors were a wonderful scale of grays and browns with some deep, fine greens.

  The delegates were seated at one long table, facing another long table at which the officials sat. At the stroke of eight, a door on the officials’ side of the room opened. A man, neither tall nor short, stepped in. He gave an impression of tremendous but controlled strength, which seemed to permeate the entire room. He wore warm high boots and a green khaki uniform of coarse quality. The jacket, buttoned up to the neck, was old, the elbows worn down almost to holes, and the wristbands so threadbare that loose threads were plainly visible.

  The man himself was dark and warm-colored, like a Mexican peasant. The skin of his face was pitted with smallpox. He had startling, vivid, but small eyes. Thick black mustache ends drooped along each side of his mouth. His hair was cropped short. He had a remarkably rugged physique which suggested great physical power.

  He stopped before the officials’ table and stood quietly before us; then he put his hands, which had been clenched tightly into fists, into his pockets.

  Without any visible sign, everyone suddenly stood up; an eerie silence pervaded the room.

  The chairman broke it. “Comrade Stalin,” he said, “is going to have the floor.”

  We had been asked before to make no display. Nevertheless, three or four people started to applaud. I recall that they were dressed in the black suits of German professors. As soon as we heard them, we could not restrain ourselves from joining in. The applause rose to a resounding ovation.

  Stalin leaned toward the center of the table, acknowledged the handclapping with a slight movement of his head, and placed his right hand on his breast. The moment the ovation was over, he put his hand back in his pocket and said, “I thank you, comrades. I accept your spirited greeting in the name of the revolutionary workers who participated in the October Revolution with successful achievement. I come here in their name and under their mandate. My purpose is to inform you what we have done since the Revolution, what we are doing at present, and what we propose to do next.”

  Stalin paused, acknowledging a new burst of applause. Making a friendly gesture for his admirers to stop, he continued, “I am going to tell you things that you can easily verify. Should you not approve what I say, I hope you will openly manifest your disapproval with the same spirit you have just displayed.”

  This drew an approving murmur from his listeners. Stalin’s speech, in Russian, ended exactly at nine o’clock. Immediately, tea was brought into the room. Stalin sat
down to his glass, drained it, and lit and smoked his pipe while interpreters translated his words into the many languages spoken by the delegates.

  The translations took another half hour. Then for the next ten minutes, free, informal discussions went on. At a quarter to ten the chairman rang a bell, and Stalin resumed speaking.

  After a few minutes, a magnetic current arose which seemed to fuse the speaker with each member of his audience. Stalin used no oratorical devices. He phrased his words in the tone one uses in informal conversation with friends. Speaking slowly, he pronounced each word with care. Very few of his listeners understood Russian. Yet as I studied the faces around me, I could see in each an urgent desire for communication. Throughout the speech, not a single face showed fatigue or inattention.

  When the speech was over, questions were called for. Stalin answered them with a clarity and power of logic the like of which I had only once before encountered, in Jaurès. His reasoning, though luminous, was mercilessly straightforward.

  The last question asked was, “What do you intend doing if the minority opposition in the Party still persists, thereby violating the Party’s final decision?”

  The figure of Stalin appeared to grow taller as he gave his detailed answer, concluding with, “We are going to produce all available proofs that our decisions are correct. We will present these proofs to the opposition. If, then, they still refuse to return to the general party line, we shall be obliged either to suspend or expel them.

  “I do not believe, however, that they will refuse to accept the will of the majority, since we have all the workers on our side. The opposition maintains that the workers oppose us and are discontented. This does not seem correct. You have all seen our workers voluntarily marching in ranks with readied, bayoneted guns and plenty of ammunition. If the workers are against us, why don’t they shoot us down when they file past, especially when we are grouped together, as we were recently, when we paid tribute at the tomb of Lenin? We would have made a perfect target on that occasion.”

  His searching glance encompassed all of us, one after another. “Yes, why did they not shoot us?” he asked again. “Thousands passed before the tribune, and the fire of one well-trained man would have been enough to annihilate us all in a few seconds. Why didn’t they, then? Simply because we express their united will. If the opposition, therefore, insists upon disrupting our unity and delivering divided armies to our enemies, we will be forced to turn to the methods of the G.P.U.” Saying which, Stalin smashed the table with his fist as if he were actually falling upon the opposition.

  A hush followed this outburst. Stalin looked out upon the assembly, as if gauging its reaction, which began with scattered clapping and swelled into another ovation.

  Stalin did not now acknowledge the applause but sat down calmly and lit his pipe, awaiting the completion of the translations and the reading of the agenda for the next meetings.

  I was sitting directly opposite Stalin. Taking advantage of my position, I began making sketches of his face. He evidently noticed what I was doing. When I put down my pencil, he walked over and asked to see my pencil sketches. He examined all of them, selected one, and wrote on the back of it in blue pencil: “Greetings to the Mexican revolutionaries,” and signed “Stalin.” As he was inscribing, the chairman declared the meeting over. After Stalin left, we were given the signal to leave the room.

  MOSCOW SKETCHES

  AT THE BEGINNING of my visit to Moscow, I was lodged in the Peasants’ House. This building had formerly been an exclusive club of the Moscow magnates, surpassed in prestige only by the Noblemen’s Club. Here the biggest landowners of Europe often came to meet the wealthy Russian merchants of wheat, flour, tea, furs, and caviar. It had not been as elegantly appointed as the Noblemen’s Club, and its architecture had not been considered high style, but it had boasted an intimate theater in which could be seen the most beautiful naked women in nocturnal Europe. The most luxurious suites had been reserved for the rendezvous of the beauteous artistes and their moneyed admirers. Here the biggest diamonds, emeralds, and rubies in the world had changed ownership.

  Billiard tables were still ranged in the salon, which was as huge as a railroad station waiting room. Most of the lavish halls were furnished with their original, old-fashioned Russian-style pieces, interspersed with other pieces in the most baroque and revolting modernism of the turn of the century.

  This building, which formerly had served the revels of the upper bourgeoisie, now belonged to the peasants on whom they had fattened. In the burlesque theater and in other large halls, Russian farmers in colorful folk costumes could be seen dancing. They, too, were celebrating the tenth year of the new system in which they had become the owners as well as the workers of the land. The place rang with their healthy exuberance.

  Many and varied cultural entertainments went on night and day. At all times, a rich table was set for the peasants, who had come from all corners of the world to meet with their comrades in this exciting land.

  Wishing to broaden my acquaintance with the Russian people, I decided to move to a hotel where a large number of other delegates had taken up residence. I remained here for the period of the celebration and a little after.

  When the festivals and meetings were over, I was asked by the manager of the hotel whether I intended to go elsewhere or stay on in Moscow. I replied that I might remain indefinitely. I had just received a request from the Commissar of Education to do a mural in the Red Army Club. If the public favored this work, I had been told, I would be allowed to paint the walls of a newly completed institute.

  When I explained this to the manager, he declared, “That’s fine, comrade. You’re no longer a guest but one of our own citizens.” Then he shook my hand in congratulation. That was the whole ceremony extended to me in recognition of my acceptance. I appreciated its beauty and simplicity. But I admired all of the social customs in Russia during my visit.

  I recall one incident especially well. It occurred during a day in my travels through the countryside. I had just settled down in my train compartment when I saw a young man walk casually over to an attractive young woman in the compartment across from mine. The young man smiled but said not a word. Instead, he unhurriedly took out his health and identity cards and offered them for the girl’s inspection. In a minute she was smiling back and offering him her credentials. What an ideal way to choose one’s lovers!

  A few days later, someone knocked at my hotel door early in the morning. I let in a skinny, gangly, sallow-looking adolescent boy. However, the lad presented himself to me in a manner that was respectful and self-assured. Introducing himself as the chief reporter for Komsomolskaya Pravda, he went on, “Comrade Rivera, we have learned that you’re going to stay among us. Will you write an article for us? Our organization is not rich, most of us being students. Here, however, is thirteen hundred rubles for your article. We would like to be the ones to give you your first job in the Soviet Union.”

  I was touched to have the Communist youth organization do me this honor. At the same time, I was surprised at the extreme youth of the reporter sent to represent his paper. I would have guessed his age at about thirteen. After further discussion, we agreed that I should do not one but a series of ten articles, to be delivered at fifteen-day intervals. I signed a three-line contract to that effect.

  As the reporter was stowing away the contract in his briefcase, preparing to go, I asked, “How old are you, comrade? You look very young.”

  He seemed rather offended at my remark. Raising himself to his full height, he replied, “But not at all, comrade; I am seventeen years already.”

  I had to restrain myself from laughing, so odd to my Mexican ears seemed the boy’s grown-up pride, and so typical of the new Russia, where youth, too, has its constructive place in society.

  As soon as my young friend had left, I sat down to outline the subjects of my future articles. For the next few days, I was busy jotting down notes on Mexico’s social situation, which
was to be the subject of my opening piece. In the midst of it, I was interrupted by another visitor, a towering, bearded man in high boots and a green uniform. He held a black portfolio under his arm.

  In beautiful French, he said, “Comrade Rivera, I’m Engineer So-and-So. I’m extremely interested in your paintings. We have all seen reproductions of your frescoes. I happen to be the director of one of the newest factories in Moscow and a technical labor inspector. In that capacity, I have come to offer you any materials you may need for the murals you’re to do in Moscow.”

  But, alas, I was not to put so much as a dab of paint on any wall in Moscow. The reason is quite simple. Lunacharsky, my host, “requested” me to return to Mexico. I suspect that resentment on the part of certain Soviet artists brought about this unhappy turn.

  Leaving Moscow, I had in my pocket a mandate to organize the peasants’ and workers’ electoral bloc in Mexico. I also carried several sketches for a Ministry of Education fresco, which I intended to complete at home, numerous water colors of the Red Army, cover designs for some Soviet magazines, and three or four sketch books recording my observations of the life of the Soviet people.

  Epecially impressive among these was one in water colors depicting the May Day celebration. I had done a series portraying a Russian worker and his family from the time they prepared to attend this event until its close, including the march into Red Square. I also took home some finished oils on the October anniversary celebration.

  AN INSPIRATION

  FROM Moscow I went to Hamburg, where I embarked for Mexico. On the second morning out of that port, I was surprised and delighted to meet my friend David Álfaro Siqueiros, with his first wife, Gracielo Amador. They had boarded the ship the night before from France. The three of us enjoyed a warm reunion.