My Art, My Life

by Diego Rivera

  Of the four panels, two depicted traditional Mexican festivals: one centering about the ancient Yautepec god of war, Huichilobos; the other honoring the bandit hero Augustin Lorenzo, who fought against the French and once unsuccessfully attempted to kidnap the Empress Carlotta. Of the remaining two panels, dedicated to more contemporary themes, one burlesqued the Mexico of the tourists and lady folklorists—desiccated urban types whose imbecile pretensions were satirized by asses’ ears sprouting from their heads.

  The other depicted the carnival which is Mexican life today. Here men in symbolic uniforms, with mask-like faces, charged upon straw scarecrows as the street crowds obediently blew their noisemakers. Among them, a pig-faced general danced with a woman symbolizing Mexico; his hand surreptitiously reached over her shoulder to steal fruit from the basket on her back. A man with sheep’s features, symbolizing the hireling intellectual, broadcast an official account of the festivities, holding aloft a dry bone. Over his shoulder peeped a grinning cleric. Behind an enormous, out-of-scale figure was the head of a Mexican capitalist. The ugly, grinning giant who obscured him and dominated the panel bore features of Hitler, Mussolini, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the Mikado. A flag which he held in his right hand was a composite of the colors of Germany, Italy, the United States, and Japan.

  My old friend Pani watched the progress of my panels with affable smiles. If he had any objections to any of the details, he never declared them to my face. Instead, when I had completed my work, he secretly sent his brother Arturo to make the changes he desired. Arturo painted out the American portion of the giant’s flag; he also removed the thieving hand of General Pig from Miss Mexico’s basket; and he altered the features of a dancing tiger who resembled Calles. Informed of these “improvements” a few nights afterward, I charged into the hotel. Guns were drawn, the police arrived, and I was taken to jail to spend the night. The following day the building trades union called a sympathy strike.

  Apparently desirous of ending all of Pani’s legal troubles in one swoop, the Attorney General of the Republic summoned me, the workers’ legal representative, and Pani’s attorney to a hearing at his office. After the formal preliminaries, the Attorney General cited an old law which held that anyone who altered a work of art, while preserving the signature of its original creator, was guilty of forgery. Since my agreement with Pani contained no provision permitting alterations, the Attorney General ruled Pani guilty of that offense. He ordered Pani to pay not only the stipulated fee but a heavy fine for ordering the act of forgery, and full compensation to the workers for wages lost while out on strike. I knew that this judgment would infuriate Pani, and I remarked to Frida that we must expect some act of retaliation from him.

  Pani fought the judgment in the courts and lost; and while the case remained alive, the strike continued. One day, accompanied by a labor inspector, Frida and I arrived outside the hotel in the capacity of supplementary guards for the workers. Upon seeing us, Pani immediately dispatched his brother Arturo to summon help from the police station. Arturo offered the police lieutenant a bribe of two hundred pesos to throw us in jail. The officer indignantly refused and accused Arturo of attempted corruption.

  Before the charge could be legally presented, however, Arturo somehow managed to have Frida whisked off to the police station. Enraged near to madness by this, I warned Arturo that as soon as I got Frida out, I would deal with him in my own way. Arturo was frightened by my show of anger; he whined that he should not be held responsible, that he had only followed brother Alberto’s orders. If I wanted satisfaction, I should deal with Alberto.

  In blind rage I answered him with the first threat which entered my mind. “Very well, Arturo, crawl back to your brother and tell him that this dirty little trick is going to cost him one of his eyes.”

  Gambler’s luck was with me. My random threat soon came true, though through no action of mine. At a bullfight not long afterwards, an excited, drunken army captain threw an empty bottle into the air. It lit on Pani’s skull and put out one of his eyes.

  The panels were finally removed from the hotel and replaced by mirrors. Pani kept them in storage for a time and then sold them to Misrachi, who stored them in the warehouse of his Central Art Galleries in Mexico City.

  AN INVITATION FROM MUSSOLINI

  IN THE SAME YEAR, 1936, I was invited to paint in Italy. The offer came from Mussolini himself, through a most unique envoy, Margherita Sarfatti, an acquaintance of my Paris days, who had been Mussolini’s mistress.

  In 1908, when I first met Margherita, she was a member of the “salon set,” also frequented by Angelica Balabanova. Around these two beautiful young women clustered such men as Modigliani, Riccioto Canudo, the brothers Garibaldi, and Margherita’s lover of the time, Valentine de Saint Point. One activity of the group was the publication of a magazine which was regarded as an organ of the French imperialists.

  The one member of the group who differed politically from the others was Angelica. She was, in fact, a personal friend of Lenin and one of the most eminent social revolutionaries in Paris. During this period Mussolini, then an Italian Socialist leader, became Angelica’s lover. Soon he was the puppet of the fiery Angelica, echoing her every word and thought; for a time in fact, Angelica was Mussolini’s brain. Then one day, at the home of Saint Point, Mussolini met and fell in love with Margherita, deserted Angelica, and took Margherita as his mistress. Assuming Angelica’s old role, Margherita turned his thinking completely about, nurturing the germ of fascism which had always lain dormant in Il Duce’s mind.

  My telephone rang at one o’clock in the morning. I picked up the receiver and heard Misrachi at the other end of the line. Apologizing for disturbing me at this late hour, he jubilantly informed me that a very lovely European lady had purchased every painting of mine in his gallery and was going to take them all back with her to Europe. Before she left, however, she wanted to speak to me personally. Misrachi urged me to grant her this favor. I had no idea then who she might be, but when I heard her voice on the telephone, I immediately recognized it as Margherita’s.

  She said, “Diego, you old fool, I’ve been thrown over by the Old Man and now even you refuse to talk to your old Parisian friend. I wanted to speak to you, not for personal reasons, but because I have a message from him which I must give you before I leave Mexico. Mussolini instructed me to tell you how much your work is appreciated in Italy, and that anytime you wish to come to Italy, you’re welcome. You can paint whatever you like, and everything you need will be at your disposal. He also said this: if you ever feel there’s no safe place left in the world for you to plant your feet, you’ll always find a haven in Italy.”

  I answered Margherita politely—my politeness based solely upon my former acquaintance with Mussolini and herself: “Thank you for your message, Margherita, and thank Mussolini for his invitation. But tell Mussolini that I am quite certain he’ll have dire need for a safe place to put his feet much sooner than I.”

  It was my year to be prophetic. As in the case of Pani, my chance remark proved to be an augury. Ten years later my old fellow Parisian, Mussolini, was strung up with his feet high in the air.

  FRIDA: TRIUMPH AND ANGUISH

  FOLLOWING THE AFFAIR of the Hotel Reforma, poor health kept me from painting murals for several years. In his biography of me (Diego Rivera: His Life and Times, New York, 1939), Bertram Wolfe dramatizes this period of languishment as a kind of artistic exile which I incurred because of my political beliefs, but his interpretation is not in accord with the facts.

  The Medical School fresco which I had contracted to paint was not done because of my eye ailment; the commission was never revoked. Another commission I had, to do a series of frescoes in the corridors of the National Palace, was also postponed but never invalidated; and, in 1942, I actually began the work. During these years of bad health, I became passionately absorbed by a less exacting artistic activity—making spot sketches of aspects of Mexican life. Many of these sketches evolved into d
rawings and water colors. More important, they stimulated me to observe more closely than ever before the life of my countrymen. I am still making use, both in terms of subject matter and technique, of the experiments I then engaged in.

  It was about this time that Frida, beyond all doubt, proved her love for me. We were having lunch one day at the Acapulco Restaurant in Mexico City, when four hired assassins of the reactionary General Saturnino Cedillo walked up to our table. Cedillo had ordered the execution of all revolutionary partisans of General Cardenas. When the assassins calmly drew their guns and aimed them at me, I was sure my end had come.

  Quick as an arrow, Frida leaped out of her chair in front of me. She screamed at the gunmen to shoot her first if they dared. To provoke them, she called them cowards and practically every foul name in her ample vocabulary. Her hysterical shouting roused everyone in the dining room.

  The four killers, shocked into immobility, stood frozen, guns in hand, like statues of themselves. Finally, awakened to reality by the swelling hubbub around them, they wheeled and ran into the street. Some days later, while trying to escape across the northern border into the United States, all four were shot down.

  However, when the reaction to this narrow escape set in afterwards, Frida became very ill and nervous and ran a high fever. When she recovered, she resumed her painting, now with grave intensity, for she was preparing for her first New York show, only a few months off.

  Before she left for New York, taking with her the best of her recent work, I gave her, among other letters of introduction, one to Clare Boothe Luce, wife of the magazine tycoon and recently American Ambassador to Italy. I had imagined that Frida would find Mrs. Luce an interesting person to know, but she didn’t take to her at all. She found her cold, brittle, and impenetrably defensive.

  Nevertheless, Mrs. Luce asked Frida to do one painting for her, and Frida complied. Apparently, Mrs. Luce disliked the work, for she returned it to Frida only a few weeks after she had received it.

  But Mrs. Luce’s coldness was not shared by the art critics, and Frida’s New York show was warmly acclaimed. I suggested that, instead of returning to Mexico, she proceed to Paris and complete her triumph. Frida was reluctant and afraid. To persuade her, I argued that one should take every opportunity that contains the promise of fulfillment or pleasure. I was quite certain she would be well received in Paris.

  So, in 1939, Frida sailed for Paris and conquered it. The more rigorous the critics, the greater their enthusiasm.

  The praise of two men in particular gilded the aureole of Frida’s happiness. One was Vasily Kandinsky, probably the greatest pioneer in modern abstractionism; the other was Marcel Duchamp, one of the masters of abstract expressionism [sic]. Kandinsky was so moved by Frida’s paintings that, right before everyone in the exhibition room, he lifted her in his arms, and kissed her cheeks and brow while tears of sheer emotion ran down his face. Even Picasso, the difficult of difficults, sang the praises of Frida’s artistic and personal qualities. From the moment he met her until the day she left for home, Picasso was under her spell.

  In mere weeks, Frida won over the Parisian world of art more completely than more famous painters had after years of struggle. Her triumph spilled over into the world of fashion. That season Schiaparelli introduced La Robe Madame Rivera, a Parisian interpretation of Frida’s beautiful style of Mexican dress. And the most widely-read high-fashion magazine appeared on the stands with a cover photograph of Frida’s right hand, together with an elegant jewel box containing four of her favorite gems. Amid all this concern for novel, suddenly modish trinkets, it was hard to believe Europe was tottering on the brink of another world war.

  But then the bad luck that always stalked poor Frida struck again. She suddenly fell ill and had to be taken to a hospital. Though her many new friends pampered her, she was in an agony to get home, and as soon as she was well enough to travel, she changed her convalescent’s bed for a ship berth. She arrived in Mexico miserably sick, suffering the recurrent pain of her old accident.

  I never was—the reader may be bored with my repeating it—a faithful husband, even with Frida. As with Angeline and Lupe, I indulged my caprices and had affairs. Now, moved by the extremity of Frida’s condition, I began taking stock of myself as a marriage partner. I found very little which could be said in my favor. And yet I knew I could not change.

  Once, on discovering that I was having an affair with her best friend, Frida had left me, only to return with somewhat diminished pride but undiminished love. I loved her too much to want to cause her suffering, and to spare her further torments, I decided to separate from her.

  In the beginning, I only hinted at the idea of a divorce, but when the hints brought no response, I made the suggestion openly. Frida, who had by now recovered her health, responded calmly that she would prefer to endure anything rather than lose me completely.

  The situation between us grew worse and worse. One evening, entirely on impulse, I telephoned her to plead for her consent to a divorce, and in my anxiety, fabricated a stupid and vulgar pretext. I dreaded a long, heart-wrenching discussion so much that I impulsively seized on the quickest way to my end.

  It worked. Frida declared that she too wanted an immediate divorce. My “victory” quickly changed to gall in my heart. We had been married now for thirteen years. We still loved each other. I simply wanted to be free to carry on with any woman who caught my fancy. Yet Frida did not object to my infidelity as such. What she could not understand was my choosing women who were either unworthy of me or inferior to her. She took it as a personal humiliation to be abandoned for sluts. To let her draw any line, however, was this not to circumscribe my freedom? Or was I simply the depraved victim of my own appetites? And wasn’t it merely a consoling lie to think that a divorce would put an end to Frida’s suffering? Wouldn’t Frida suffer even more?

  During the two years we lived apart, Frida turned out some of her best work, sublimating her anguish in her painting . . . and then, because of certain events which involved her, although indirectly, she became weak and sick again. I shall now relate these events exactly, if not always in the sequence in which they occurred.

  TROTSKY

  ON MAY 24, 1940, twenty men disguised as policemen burst into the Mexican home of Leon Trotsky and his wife and sprayed his bedroom with Thompson submachine guns. The Trotskys saved themselves by dropping flat on the floor while their beds were riddled by about three hundred rounds. Questioned by the police as to the identity of his would-be assassins, Trotsky suggested that it might prove enlightening to investigate a station wagon belonging to a well-known local painter which had been seen in the neighborhood at the time of the attack.

  One night, several days later, a platoon of policemen, moving silently through the street, cordoned off my studio in San Angel. I knew nothing of this action until I received a telephone call from the movie actress Paulette Goddard, whose portrait I had recently begun painting. Paulette was staying at an inn just across from my studio. Chancing to look outside her window, she saw what was happening and immediately rang me up.

  “Diego,” she said, her voice trembling with excitement, “if I know anything about gangster movies, brother, you’re on the spot. The cops are swarming around your studio. And they look like they mean business.”

  Visiting my studio at the time was the Hungarian-American painter Irene Bohus. Despite the fact that I had no notion what the police wanted with me, I recognized trouble and decided to get away. Irene agreed to help me, and I quickly worked out a plan. Irene left the studio, carrying as many canvases as she could under her arms. She descended very slowly by the outside stairway, bidding me a long, loud adieu in English. After responding to Irene’s first words, I left the door wide open and ran back to put on all the lights in my studio. This was to give the impression that I had resumed my work. However, I immediately ran down the inside stairway to Irene’s car, safely concealed in the inner courtyard. By the time Irene, who had meanwhile been prete
nding to bombard me with chatter, entered the car, I was lying flat on the floor inside. She piled all the canvases she had taken on top of me, concealing me completely. Then she swung the car out of the courtyard and into the road, whisking me out from under the very noses of Police Colonel de la Rosa and all thirty of his men, alertly waiting to move in on me with drawn revolvers.

  When the police finally entered my house and found me gone, they proceeded to search it for evidence. Probably angered over being outwitted, they broke some items of my valuable archeological collection. My watch and certain other personal belongings also disappeared.

  They stayed the whole night, awaiting my return. By next morning, realizing that I was not going to oblige them, they appropriated my station wagon and arrested my two chauffeurs. They kept the chauffeurs in custody for two weeks, subjecting them to all the devices used by police to extort confessions, but to no avail. Meanwhile, the police laboratory had made a thorough analysis of my station wagon, but since I had had no connection with the attack, they found nothing, and their efforts to implicate me remained fruitless.

  During all this time I stayed in hiding. For, in spite of my innocence, I did not want to become involved in any way in the intrigues which had come to surround Trotsky. My refuge was never discovered by the police. Paulette, enjoying her role in this real-life drama, brought me delicacies and the finest of wines on her frequent visits. Her lovely presence alone was enough to make my retreat a delight. In the meanwhile, my portrait of Paulette, as well as all of Irene’s paintings, were removed from the studio and put in the custody of a good friend, American Vice-Consul MacGregor. Since both Paulette and Irene were American citizens, he was merely acting to protect their property.