Latin American & Caribbean Art, Individual Artists, Frescoes & Murals, Painters - Biography

Diego Rivera

Name: Diego Rivera
Author: Pete Hamill
ISBN: 9780810932340

by Pete Hamill

Write a review

Overview

Like his contemporary, Pablo Picasso, the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was a man of enormous energy, astonishing versatility, and voracious appetites. Rivera made his mark as one of the greatest muralists of the twentieth century. His dramatic public life involved him in the deepest contradictions of art and politics. The great years of Rivera's art - the 1920s and early 1930s - saw an outpouring of work that was equal to the achievement of any twentieth-century master.. "Pete Hamill's Diego Rivera narrates the life and explores the art of this remarkable figure: prodigiously productive artist, polemicist and political activist, Mexican nationalist, and lover of many women. Acknowledging the cost of Rivera's didactic communism, Hamill focuses on what is enduring in his work.. "Pete Hamill has served as editor in chief of the New York Daily News, the New York Post, and the Mexico City News.

About the Author, Pete Hamill

Pete Hamill

From his days as a crack reporter (who incredibly rose to the editor-in-chief post of both rival dailies The New York Post and The New York Daily News) to his novels like the sweeping Manhattan epic Forever, Pete Hamill keeps his typing fingers on the pulse of the city he calls home.

Biography

Throughout his colorful career as a writer, New York City has been a constant backdrop and inspiration for Pete Hamill -- from his success at several New York newspapers and magazines to his look back at A Drinking Life to his latest sweeping novel about a man gifted with immortality in the city he calls home: Forever.

Born in Brooklyn in 1935 as the first of seven children to Irish immigrant parents, Hamill attended Catholic schools throughout his childhood. More in tune with the city streets than the schoolroom, he dropped out at 16 to labor in the Brooklyn Navy Yard as a sheet metal worker, and from there signed up with the U.S. Navy, where he was able to eventually complete his high school education. The G.I. Bill of Rights helped him gain admission to Mexico City College in 1956-1957, where he was a student of art and design.

While Hamill fell in love with Mexico (and would eventually come to consider it his second home), his interest in design brought him back to New York to study at Pratt Institute. However, in 1960, he made the fateful career move that would change his life: taking a job as a beat reporter for The New York Post. Hamill's pavement-pounding work made him a crafty chronicler of city life -- from the grimy streets of the crime beat to the chaotic uprisings of the 1960s -- and he graduated to columnist. Soon after, he made the slightly scandalous move to the Post's rival paper, The New York Daily News. Perhaps one of Hamill's most intriguing achievements in New York journalism is the fact that he served as editor-in-chief of both papers -- the city's two most notoriously competitive dailies.

Hamill's nonfiction books have resonated with readers craving more than a few column inches. His 1994 memoir, A Drinking Life, was, as Publishers Weekly noted, "not a jeremiad condemning drink... but a thoughtful, funny, street-smart reflection on its consequences." Turning his attention to other lives, Hamill has also written tributes to idols Frank Sinatra (1998's Why Sinatra Matters) and Mexican painter Diego Rivera (1999's Diego Rivera).

Hamill has also enjoyed critical and commercial success as a fiction writer. His 1997 novel, Snow in August, was an instant New York Times bestseller. On the gritty coming-of-age story, the Times observed, "Mr. Hamill has told versions of this story many times, in fiction and journalism. But in his new novel...Mr. Hamill adds magic. Hamill is not a subtle writer, but his gift for sensual description and his tabloid muscularity fit this page turner of a fable."

2002's Forever brings Hamill's street smarts and near-encyclopedic knowledge of New York City together with his gift for spinning a story. Perhaps his most ambitious work yet, the novel traces the history of Manhattan through the eyes of a man who has watched it unfold for the better part of two centuries -- thanks to an otherworldly wish he is granted. It's likely Hamill's secret wish as well.

Good To Know

Since the 1950s, Hamill has had a keen interest in Mexico and considers it his home away from home. As a reporter, he covered the events in Tlatelolco in 1968, the Olympic Games that followed, and a major earthquake in 1985. For six months in 1986, he served as editor of The Mexico City News.

He is married to Japanese journalist Fukiko Aoki and has two grown daughters -- one a poet, the other a photographer for the Arizona Republic in Phoenix.

Reviews

There are no reviews yet. Log in to write one.

Editorials

From Barnes & Noble

Mexican painter Diego Rivera's "stoic, laboring peasants" and "warm, earthy palette" are familiar to many, if not most, art lovers, but fewer are familiar with his turbulent life. In Diego Rivera -- part biography, part "appreciation" -- award-winning journalist Pete Hamill, who himself studied art in Mexico City many years ago, attempts to get beyond the myths that have long surrounded Rivera to the man they obscure.

Dean Bakopoulos

In this tight and balanced look at Mexican painter Diego Rivera, journalist and novelist Pete Hamill focuses on Rivera's work. While Hamill touches on Rivera's unpredictable temperament...notably displayed in his infamous marriage to Frida Kahlo...this gorgeous book devotes itself to Rivera's development as artist and political icon.

Hamill deftly shows why Rivera deserves to be remembered as one of the great painters of the twentieth century.
— The Progressive

Library Journal

Hamill, former editor-in-chief of the New York Daily News and the New York Post, has lived, worked, and studied art in Mexico. This lively, if not definitive, biography of the pioneering Mexican muralist recounts the king-sized Rivera's real-life escapades without romantic embellishment and with a critical eye. In particular, Hamill is suspect of the seemingly universal admiration for Rivera's "narcissist" wife, artist Frida Kahlo. Coming on the heels of renewed scholarly interest in Rivera and the Mexican muralist movement, Hamill's work must inevitably compete with other studies. It relies more on secondary sources than Patrick Marnham's dependable, more thoroughly researched Dreaming with His Eyes Open (LJ 10/1/98), which it could serve to complement. With 100 very fine illustrations, 50 of which are in color; suitable for large library systems. [BOMC selection.]--Mary Hamel-Schwulst, Towson Univ., MD Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Booknews

Hamill (a political journalist, author, and editor) narrates the life and explores the art of Diego Rivera, the prodigiously productive artist, polemicist and political activist, Mexican nationalist, and lover of many women. Acknowledging the cost of Rivera's didactic communism, he provides historical insights and focuses on what is enduring in the artist's work. The 107 illustrations (including 59 in color) show the full range of his art (murals, paintings, drawings, and illustrations) as well as documentary photographs. Oversize: 10x10<">. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)