by Diego Rivera
Two hours after the conference, Chávez, back by plane from Acapulco, telephoned my lawyer to ask for a gentlemen’s agreement with me. I was to withdraw my accusations and give back my advance and, in return, receive my mural, stretchers, and all other materials mentioned in my contract.
The agreement was accepted. At exactly five o’clock that same day, Chávez, having “found” my purloined painting, accompanied me to the door of the Fine Arts Palace. He shook my hand, declaring the incident closed, and asked for a renewal of our friendship.
“I declare the incident closed,” I responded, “and also, I declare as ended your status as a decent human being. Further, I declare as being completely terminated our former friendship. Good-bye.”
On the opening day of the Mexican art exhibition in Paris, 2,500,000 copies of Humanité, journal of the French workers, put reproductions of my banned mural into as many hands and told the whole story concerning it. Reproductions were also sold at the door of the exhibition by young men and women belonging to progressive peace organizations. Many more such reproductions were sold all over the world, especially in the United States and China. The government of China finally acquired the original work.
In short, my painting turned out to be more successful for having been withdrawn than it would have been if quietly shown to the art-going public in Paris. Chávez, Gamboa, and company succeeded in making themselves notorious before the entire world as futile suppressors of the right of freedom of expression—a most ignoble and unenviable distinction.
CANCER
IN 1952 I began to be bothered by pain in the penis, the swelling of that organ, and the retention of urine. After making the usual tests, my physician diagnosed my illness as cancer of the penis. He advised amputating my penis and testicles to prevent the spread of the malignancy.
I objected to this horrifying proposal and asked the doctor to try to arrest the cancer with X-ray therapy instead. “If you cannot,” I said, “I want everything to remain as it is. I will be completely responsible. I refuse to allow the amputation of those organs which have given me the finest pleasure I know.”
My doctor acceded to the request, and I underwent X-ray treatments. After a few months my symptoms disappeared. The doctor then performed a biopsy, which showed the malignancy to have been arrested. Reports of my rapid and amazing recovery were made known to medical groups all over the world. Cancer of the penis is so rare in this hemisphere as to evoke much curiosity. One of the foremost radiologists of the United States flew to Mexico just to study my case.
After this frightening experience, I altered my diet in order to keep my body in the best of condition. Bearing in mind my doctor’s maxim that, for every two pounds of weight I lost, I would live another year, I cut down on fats and starches and proportionally increased my intake of proteins. For the next few years my lunch, my main meal, consisted of two eggs, meat, two slices of black bread, yogurt, a cooked dessert, six different fruits, and a tall thermos of unsweetened black coffee. This was packed for me at home in a laborer’s lunchbox which I carried with me onto the scaffold, eating when one of my helpers reminded me it was mealtime.
While I was undergoing treatment, I passed through a deep personal depression, dominated by the feeling that my life was practically over. It happened that during this time I was working on a wall of the new Hospital de la Raza. My subject was the history of medicine in Mexico. On the left side of the mural, I painted a giant, phallic, yellow-green Tree of Life. Suddenly I was stopped by a painful idea flashing through my mind. Gazing wistfully at my creation, I thought, “No more for me. Physical love exists for me no longer. I am an old man, too old and too sick to enjoy that wonderful ecstasy.”
As my health returned I became restless. I yearned to go back to Europe and paint there again. It seemed to me that despite all the work I had been doing in the past few years, I had been asleep and not even dreaming. In 1946 I had passed up a second invitation to paint in Italy, extended by the administration of Alcide de Gasperi.
Now I decided to take advantage of the opportunity provided by the Vienna World Peace Conference to travel on the continent which had been my second home. Accompanied by my younger daughter Ruth, I left Mexico for Austria in January of 1953, planning to stop on the way back in Chile, where another peace conference was scheduled some weeks later.
Vienna, it seemed to me, had not yet shaken off the effects of the recent war. The despair of the people, which I observed during the conference, was reflected in the incomplete restoration of the city. Vienna was like a gravely wounded man who has experienced everything, and in the recesses of his heart, yearns only for order and peace.
When the conference was over I made a short junket to Czechoslovakia. Here, by contrast, I observed a remarkable recovery from the war. It was as if I were in another world. I was surprised and delighted. The people were happy and busy, and their activity showed a deep and positive sense of purpose. As I wandered through the towns and cities, I came upon murals noteworthy not only for their technical maturity but for the enjoyment and enthusiasm for life they expressed. Even the industrial murals had a deeply poetic quality.
When I got back to Mexico, I felt renewed again. The trip had admirably served its purpose as a tonic. Some time in the future I would like to commemorate it in a painting of the Vienna World Peace Conference from sketches which I made at the time—a mural if possible, but if not, a large canvas, depicting the final session as I remember it.
YET ANOTHER STORM
TOWARD THE END of February, 1953, I was commissioned to do a mural on an outside wall of the new Teatro de los Insurgentes. Designed by the brothers Julio and Alejandro Prieto, this motion-picture house belonged to the master politician and composer of songs José Maria Dávila and his vivacious and attractive wife, Queta. It was Señora Dávila, chiefly, who was responsible for my being offered this interesting commission.
The space I was given comprised the whole main façade of the theatre, facing the busy Avenida de los Insurgentes. The plastic problem here was extremely challenging. For the surface was curved at the top and convex, and most of the people who would see the mural would be passing it quickly in cars and buses.
To establish immediately the theme of the mural and the purpose of the building, I painted a large masked head with two female hands in delicately laced evening gloves in the lower central portion. I covered the remaining surface with scenes from plays reflecting the history of Mexico from pre-Colonial times to the present, and converging in the upper center in a portrait of Cantinflas, the Mexican genius of popular farce, asking for money from the rich people and giving it to the poor, as he actually does.
It was this scene which precipitated the storm. When only the first charcoal sketch had been done, someone noticed that Cantinflas was wearing a medal of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Immediately there arose a hue and cry. It was blasphemous to connect a low comedy figure with something as sacred as the Virgin.
Interviewed by reporters, Cantinflas said that if I had actually blasphemed against the Virgin of Guadalupe in my mural, he would never permit any of his films to be shown in the theater. But my representation could be simply literal, for he always wore the medal in real life. Nobody, Cantinflas said, could either take it away from him or mock his reverence and love.
When Cantinflas saw my sketch, he was perfectly satisfied. He even posed with me for pictures on the scaffold beside the place where I had drawn the Virgin. He stood next to me, proudly showing his medal for the public to see in the photographers’ prints.
Having Cantinflas’ endorsement, the press came over to my side, pointing out that there was nothing contradictory between Cantinflas and the Virgin of Guadalupe. Cantinflas was an artist who symbolized the people of Mexico, and the Virgin was the banner of their faith.
A majority of the public subscribed to this interpretation. But the agitation against my painting was not allowed to die away. In fact, it was organized by a gangster syndicate led by profes
sional extortioners, posing as staunch supporters of the Faith.
The gangsters’ purpose was to shake down the Dávilas for a percentage of the profits of the theater—their price for tranquility. Not only the Dávilas, but even Cantinflas began to be frightened by the situation, and finally, I myself ceased to find it amusing. So when I got to that portion of the mural where the Virgin had been sketched, I did not paint her in at all, outwitting both friends and enemies, false and true. Executing this unexpected turnabout, I must admit, gave me not a little pleasure.
FRIDA DIES
FOR ME, the most thrilling event of 1953 was Frida’s one-man show in Mexico City during the month of April. Anyone who attended it could not but marvel at her great talent. Even I was impressed when I saw all her work together. The arrangements had been made by her many friends as their personal tribute to her.
At the time Frida was bedridden—a few months later one of her legs was to be amputated—and she arrived in an ambulance, like a heroine, in the midst of admirers and friends.
Frida sat in the room quietly and happily, pleased at the numbers of people who were honoring her so warmly. She said practically nothing, but I thought afterwards that she must have realized she was bidding good-bye to life.
The following August she re-entered the hospital to have her leg cut off at the knee. The nerves had died and gangrene had set in. The doctors had told her that if they didn’t perform this operation, the poison would spread through her whole body and kill her. With typical courage, she asked them to amputate as soon as possible. The operation was her fourteenth in sixteen years.
Following the loss of her leg, Frida became deeply depressed. She no longer even wanted to hear me tell her of my love affairs, which she had enjoyed hearing about after our remarriage. She had lost her will to live.
Often, during her convalescence, her nurse would phone to me that Frida was crying and saying she wanted to die. I would immediately stop painting and rush home to comfort her. When Frida was resting peacefully again, I would return to my painting and work overtime to make up for the lost hours. Some days I was so tired that I would fall asleep in my chair, high up on the scaffold.
Eventually I set up a round-the-clock watch of nurses to tend to Frida’s needs. The expense of this, coupled with other medical costs, exceeded what I was earning painting murals, so I supplemented my income by doing water colors, sometimes tossing off two big water colors a day.
In May, 1954, Frida seemed to be rallying. One raw night in June she insisted upon attending a demonstration and caught pneumonia. She was put back in bed for three weeks more. Almost recovered, she arose one night in July and against the doctor’s orders, took a bath.
Three days later she began to feel violently ill. I sat beside her bed until 2:30 in the morning. At four o’clock she complained of severe discomfort. When the doctor arrived at daybreak, he found that she had died a short time before of an embolism of the lungs.
When I went into her room to look at her, her face was tranquil and seemed more beautiful than ever. The night before she had given me a ring she had bought me as a gift for our twenty-fifth anniversary, still seventeen days away. I had asked her why she was presenting it so early and she had replied, “Because I feel I am going to leave you very soon.”
But though she knew she would die, she must have put up a struggle for life. Otherwise, why should death have been obliged to surprise her by stealing away her breath while she was asleep?
According to her wish, her coffin was draped with the Mexican Communist flag, and thus she lay in state in the Palace of Fine Arts. Reactionary government officials raised a cry against this display of a revolutionary symbol, and our good friend Dr. Andrés Iduarte, Director of the Fine Arts Institute, was fired from his post for permitting it. The newspapers amplified the noise and it was heard throughout the world.
I was oblivious to it all. July 13, 1954, was the most tragic day of my life. I had lost my beloved Frida forever.
When I left, I turned over our house in Coyoacán to the government as a museum for those paintings of mine which Frida had owned. I made only one other stipulation: that a corner be set aside for me, alone, for whenever I felt the need to return to the atmosphere which recreated Frida’s presence.
Once out of Coyoacán, I went on a mad tear of the night clubs. I hate them, and yet I couldn’t bear being alone with my thoughts. My only consolation now was my readmission into the Communist Party.
EMMA—I AM HERE STILL
ABOUT NINE MONTHS after Frida’s death, I had a recurrence of my cancer of the penis. The Mexican doctors again wanted to amputate. I informed them that though it meant my life, I would still withhold my permission. I had already lived for nearly seventy years, and that was enough if I could not continue to enjoy a normal life.
I now gave up all thought of remarrying; it would be unfair to encumber any desirable woman with whom I could not share a normal social and sexual life.
But my friend Emma Hurtado loved me enough, despite my condition, to want to marry and take care of me. Emma, a magazine publisher, had always been interested in my work. In fact, ten years before, she had opened a gallery for the sole purpose of displaying and selling Rivera paintings. During the ten years we had known one another, a warm feeling of mutuality had always existed between us. Frida was already dead for a year when we decided to become man and wife. Because of our understandable uncertainty, we kept the news of our marriage a secret, even from the most immediate members of our families, for almost a month.
A short time later Emma and I left for Moscow, where I had been invited. As soon as it was learned that I was sick with cancer, the Soviet doctors offered to try to cure me with cobalt treatments not yet available in Mexico. The treatments and in fact everything in Russia cost neither Emma nor me a penny.
I was treated for seven months in the finest hospital in Moscow and then released as cured. The doctors, four-fifths of whom, incidentally, were women, told me that had I come to them four years before at the onset of the cancer, they could have cured me in a month. Before I left the hospital, I was given a complete physical examination and advised that I was now in the pink of health.
During my long stay in bed, I thought often of Emma’s kindness, tenderness, and self-sacrifice, and of how very much like Frida she was. It made me happy to feel thus brought back to Frida. Too late now I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida. But I could not really say that, given “another chance,” I would have behaved toward her any differently than I had. Every man is the product of the social atmosphere in which he grows up and I am what I am.
And what sort of man was I? I had never had any morals at all and had lived only for pleasure where I found it. I was not good. I could discern other people’s weaknesses easily, especially men’s, and then I would play upon them for no worthwhile reason. If I loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.
Yet my life had not been an easy one. Everything I had gotten, I had had to struggle for. And having got it, I had had to fight even harder to keep it. This was true of such disparate things as material goods and human affection. Of the two, I had, fortunately, managed to secure more of the latter than of the former.
As I lay in the hospital, I tried to sum up the meaning of my life. It occurred to me that I had never experienced what is commonly called “happiness.” For me, “happiness” has always had a banal sound, like “inspiration.” Both “happiness” and “inspiration” are the words of amateurs.
All I could say was that the most joyous moments of my life were those I had spent in painting; most others had been boring or sad. For even with women, unless they were interested enough in my work to spend their time with me while I painted, I knew I would certainly lose their love, not being able to spare the time away from my painting that they demanded. When I had to interrupt my painting to spend days in courting
a woman, I would be unhappy for losing the never-to-be-recovered time. Therefore, the women who were best for me were those who also loved painting.
As for my work, whenever I looked at the paintings I had done in the past, I would feel a strong repugnance to each of them. It was like the feeling I had toward a woman who asked me to make love to her after I had tired of her.
So I was unfit to judge my own work. The paintings I most preferred were invariably the most recent ones. Time and change of circumstance invariably led to new forms of expression, new attitudes, and I was constitutionally a revolutionary as opposed to a classical artist. Since everything about me had changed over the past twenty, thirty, and forty years, the work I did in those years now repelled me. Of the three completed works which I found the most interesting, two were recent—the Lerma Water Supply murals and the wall of the stadium of the new University City. The third was the series of frescoes I had done in the Detroit Arts Institute; but perhaps my appreciation of these was due to the warm reception the people gave them.
Upon my release from the hospital, I began to glow again with plans for the future. After traveling about Europe for a few weeks, I returned with Emma to Mexico.
Emma and I were met at the airport by a crowd of friends and relatives. One of them had written a song for the occasion, “The Story of Diego Rivera’s Return.” The words were: “The fourth day of April, 1956, Diego Rivera returned to his country. He was cured with cobalt, which is used to make bombs, but which will now be used to make men well. Diego Rivera came back to continue painting in the National Palace. And the end of this ditty serves to make us know that Diego and his wife have returned here, back to their dear country.”