Synopsis
Diego Rivera (1886-1957) was the greatest Mexican artist of this century-an audacious muralist, voracious lover, and ardent leftist who befriended Pablo Picasso, married Frida Kahlo, and quarreled with Leon Trotsky. Now Pete Hamill, a best-selling novelist and one of America's most esteemed journalists, gives us an extraordinary book on Rivera's life and art. Hamill, who has lived and worked in Mexico, was himself once a young art student in Mexico City. In a book that is part biography and part appreciation, he turns a novelist's eye to Rivera's tempestuous career-and shows how, despite the political passions, Rivera created a body of work that still astonishes. Filled with reproductions of Rivera's murals, paintings, and drawings as well as documentary photographs, Diego Rivera is nothing less than a tour de force.
The Progressive - 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.