MASP

Diego Rivera

The Sowers, 1947

  • Author:
    Diego Rivera
  • Bio:
    Guanajauto, México, 1886-Cidade do México, México ,1957
  • Title:
    The Sowers
  • Date:
    1947
  • Medium:
    Óleo sobre tela
  • Dimensions:
    67 x 98,5 x 2 cm
  • Credit line:
    Doação Dom Emílio Ascarraga, 1951
  • Object type:
    Pintura
  • Inventory number:
    MASP.00214
  • Photography credits:
    João Musa

TEXTS



In the years he spent in Paris (1907-1921), Rivera approached the cubism of Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) and of Juan Gris (1887-1927), as well as the painting of Cézanne (1839-1906) and of Modigliani (1884-1920). He returned to Mexico in 1921 and began to research and collect popular and pre-Columbian objects. On this basis, he conceived an epic and popular painting style made on large surfaces and for the appreciation of the masses. From 1922 onward, with support of the Ministry of Education, he made mural paintings on numerous public buildings in Mexico City, Cuernavaca and Chapingo. In 1932-33, he worked in the United States, for Detroit Institute of Arts and the Rockefeller Center of New York. The mural Industrial Work and Agricultural Work, made at the latter location, was destroyed for depicting Lenin. In 1929, Rivera married painter Frida Kahlo (1907-1954). He approached the surrealist movement and the ideological positions of Leon Trotsky, who was assassinated when he was staying as a guest in the painter’s house in Coyacan (1940). The work The Sowers (1947) is part of a series of small canvases, all from the same period, when Rivera used the same earth tones in the figures as found in the Mexican landscape. The arcing movement of the peasant’s body accompanies the curve of the hills that he is sowing, as though they were a single thing.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017




By Luciano Migliaccio
Alongside mural painting, Rivera’s output during the decade of the forties was characterized by small-sized symbolic landscapes, with surrealistic accents derived from the influence of his wife, the painter Frida Kahlo. As with the paintings in the chapel of the Autonomous University of Chapingo, done in 1927, in the Masp picture, Los Sembradores, Rivera uses a geometrical system of wavy lines and simplified, accentuated volumes derived from Giotto’s frescoes to create a visually unifying surface. The movement of the curved figures, working in the field, counterbalances the geometric fabric. The palette is comprised of black and earth tones, close to those used in mural painting in which the intention is to create an effect in relief. The representation of external reality is charged with symbolic movements that refer not only to the artist’s political and historical vision but also the man/nature relationship in a tropical world, confronting the symbolic universe of popular Mexican culture. This ability to stress the universal values of figurative language allows Rivera to rise above Orozco and Siqueiros’ romantic or political-rhetorical vision. Because of these characteristics, his style had a determining international influence on North American artists in the generation of the thirties, such as Ben Shahn (1898-1969). As regards Brazil, we know from a letter in the Masp archives, that in November 1948, Bardi offered Rivera two of the museum’s rooms for an exhibition. Two years later, Assis Chateaubriand thought of ordering a decorative panel for the hall of the Diários Associados building, from the Mexican painter. This work was never undertaken but is evidence of the Masp founders’ interest in the Mexican master’s painting due also to his influence on the muralist vocation of such Brazilian artists as Portinari and Di Cavalcanti.

— Luciano Migliaccio, 1998

Source: Luiz Marques (org.), Catalogue of the Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, São Paulo: MASP, 1998. (new edition, 2008).



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