Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park (Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central), 1947, 4.8 x 15 m (Museo Mural Diego Rivera, originally, Hotel del Prado, Mexico City)

Dream or nightmare - In Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park, hundreds of characters from 400 years of Mexican history gather for a stroll through Mexico City’s largest park. But the colorful balloons, impeccably dressed visitors, and vendors with diverse wares cannot conceal the darker side of this dream: a confrontation between an indigenous family and a police officer; a man shooting into the face of someone being trampled by a horse in the midst of a skirmish; a sinister skeleton smiling at the viewer. What kind of dream, or nightmare, is this?

Detail with rearing horse and shootingSurreal quartetIn the spirit of Surrealism, this is a complex dream. For Surrealists, like Salvador Dalí, dreams were the principal subject matter. Since dreams are so personal and strange, this allowed artists to juxtapose unrelated matter, like clocks and ants for Dalí. Though Rivera never officially joined the Surrealists, he uses this approach in Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park as he cobbles together a scene composed of disparate historical personages, including Hernán Cortés (the Spanish conqueror who initiated the fall of the Aztec Empire), Sor Juana (a seventeenth-century nun and one of Mexico’s most notable writers), and Porfirio Díaz (whose dictatorship at the turn of the twentieth century inspired the Mexican Revolution).

Detail with the artist as a young man (left), the paintier Frida Kahlo (behind him), La Catrina (the Skeleton) and the printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada (right)Perhaps the most striking grouping is a central quartet featuring Rivera, the artist Frida Kahlo, the

printmaker and draughtsman José Guadalupe Posada, and La Catrina. “Catrina” was a nickname in the early twentieth century for an elegant, upper-class woman who dressed in European clothing. 

José Guadalupe Posada, La Calavera Catrina, 1913, etching, 34.5 x 23 cmThis character became infamous in Posada’s La Calavera de la Catrina (The Catrina Skeleton), 1913. Here, the renowned printmaker depicted La Catrina as a skeleton in order to critique the Mexican elite. In Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park, Rivera reproduces the original Posada print and adds an elaborate boa—reminiscent of the feathered Mesoamerican serpent god Quetzalcóatl—around her neck. La Catrina unites two great Mexican artists in this mural: she holds Rivera’s hand as her other arm is held by Posada. Though Posada died in obscurity in 1913, artists later brought attention to his work and he was a significant influence on the Mexican muralists. The fourth character in this quartet is Kahlo. She stands behind a child-version of her husband, with one hand protectively on his shoulder as her other holds a Yin and Yang object.

In Chinese philosophy, Yin and Yang refers to opposite yet interdependent forces, like day and night. Within the name of this concept is perhaps the most fundamental duality in humanity: female (“Yin”) and male (“Yang”). Thus, this Chinese symbol becomes a metaphor for Rivera and Kahlo’s complex relationship: Rivera began as Kahlo’s mentor; they then married, separated, and got back together; they were political comrades; and they painted each other frequently. Their double-portraits often reflect the state of the couple’s relationship at that moment. In Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931) Kahlo subtly plays with the couple’s stature in order to

emphasize Rivera’s influence on her. Kahlo was ill as Rivera worked on this mural and his diminished size may reflect his feelings of helplessness.

Reading Mexican history 

Frida Kahlo, Frieda and Diego Rivera, 1931, oil on canvas, 39-3/8 x 31 inches or 100.01 x 78.74 cm (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)Stepping away from the center, if one reads the mural like a text, a chronology emerges: the left side of the composition highlights the conquest and colonization of Mexico, the fight for independence and the revolution occupy the majority of the central space, and modern achievements fill the right. For some art historians the central area is a snapshot of bourgeois life in 1895—as refined ladies and gentlemen promenade in their Sunday best, under the watchful eye of Porfirio Díaz in his plumed military garb. One gets a sense of the inequality that stirred average Mexicans to overthrow their dictator and initiate the Mexican Revolution which lasted from 1910 until 1920. In this light we can appreciate the dreams and nightmares within each epoch. To the left of the balloons the nightmares of the conquest and religious intolerance during the colonial-era give way to the dream of a democratic nation during the nineteenth century, represented by the over-sized figure of Benito Juárez, who restored the republic after French occupation and attempted to modernize the country as president. On the right of the composition, beyond the bandstand, the battles of the revolution give way to a society where “land and liberty,” as championed by the workers’ flags, becomes a tangible reality. 

Detail with Benito Juárez top centerHistories normally edited outMore often than not history is written by the victor and thus reflects an incomplete story. Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Central Park is an antidote to this: Rivera guarantees that histories normally edited out (the stories of the indigenous and the masses) have a place in this grand narrative. The artist reminds the viewer that the struggles and glory of four centuries of Mexican history are due to the participation of Mexicans from all strata of society. Essay by Doris Maria-Reina Bravo

Frida and Diego

Among Mexico's most captivating and provocative artists, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had a relationship that never failed to amaze and astonish. Though they created some of Mexico's most fascinating art, it's the bizarre Beauty-and-the-Beast dynamic that has captivated the world and enshrouded both figures in intrigue. Whether you're an art historian or simply an admirer of this eccentric duo, a visit to Mexico City -- where you can visit the home they once shared, admire their art, even see the shoes they wore and beds they slept in -- will prove to be a compelling reason to delve even further into their story.

Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's relationship was far from placid: they were married in 1929, divorced in 1940, and then married again that same year. Together, these two colorful, larger-than-life artists have endured as vibrant characters in a singularly Mexican drama. You can connect the dots on a journey of discovery in Mexico City, where you'll find numerous sites dedicated to Kahlo and Diego.A gifted painter and muralist, Diego Rivera was also a political activist; many of the sumptuous murals he created in Mexico and throughout the world speak of politics, history, and the worker's struggle. Considered one of the 20th century's major artistic figures, Rivera created images -- especially those rounded peasant women with braided hair, arms brim-full of calla lilies -- that have come to typify Mexico. Museo Dolores Olmedo Patino, the estate of Rivera's longtime model, houses 140 pieces from Rivera's body of work and an outstanding collection of paintings by Frida Kahlo. For an up-close-and-personal look at Rivera's handiwork, head to Museo Mural Diego Rivera.

Flamboyant, irreverent, and unforgettable, Frida Kahlo created arresting, and at times disturbing, works of art. Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are self-portraits, which speak of her vivaciousness and personal tragedies. The 2002 movie Frida, with Salma Hayek in the title role, brought a whole new audience to Kahlo's work. If Diego dwarfed Frida in stature, he no longer does in fame. Museo de Frida Kahlo is a must-see, with exhibits of her early sketchbooks and diaries, colorful costumes, and extravagantly decorated living quarters. Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo is the home that Rivera and Kahlo shared; it is filled with fascinating and intimate details, such as Rivera's jacket flung over a wicker chair and some works in progress still perched on easels.Frida Kahlo's hauntingly beautiful face, broken body, and bright Tehuana costumes have become the trademark of Mexican femininity. Images of her bat-wing brows, moustache, and clunky ethnic jewelry are as familiar in Mexico as Marilyn's pout and puffed-up white dress are in the U.S. This petite painter has gained international recognition since her death for her colorful but pained self-portraits.

In fact, Kahlo didn't even need to paint to make it into the history books. Controversy surrounded her two marriages to Diego Rivera, including his affair

with her younger sister and her own affair with Communist exile Leon Trotsky. It's hard not to become mired in the tragic details of her life -- from childhood polio to a tram accident that smashed her pelvis, and a gangrenous foot that resulted in the amputation of a leg.

But Kahlo was also a groundbreaking artist who pioneered a new expressiveness, and her unique iconography of suffering transcended self-pity to create an existential art. Kahlo was the first Latin American woman to have a painting in the Louvre; her work caused a storm in Paris in 1939 (at an exhibition entitled Méxique). It was André Breton who described her art as "a ribbon around a bomb."

Frida Kahlo tried hard to be as much the revolutionary as the icon of Mexican femininity. Her last public appearance was 11 days before her death on July 13, 1954, in a wheelchair at Diego's side, protesting the intervention of the United States in Guatemala.

Diego Rivera was active both in art and politics early in his life, getting expelled from his academy for joining a student strike. In 1907 he won a scholarship to study abroad and left Mexico for Spain. He returned home briefly in 1910 and held a successful exhibition in Mexico City, at which Porfirio Diaz's wife purchased six of the forty paintings. As auspicious as this event was, Rivera opted to return to Paris in 1911, this time falling in with the Parisian avant garde.

A trip to Italy in 1919 with fellow Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros introduced Rivera to the frescoes of the great Italian painters. In 1921, Rivera decided to return to Mexico with a plan to incorporate these techniques into his art -- art that would be created for the enjoyment of the public. In the grand murals he created, he addressed Mexican history and humanity's future at large.

Rivera's presence -- and the controversy that inevitably followed him -- had a profound effect on American painting and the American conception of public art. The strong Marxist themes in his work raised eyebrows wherever he went, but no controversy was greater than the one caused in 1933, when he endowed a mural commissioned by the Rockefellers for the lobby of the RCA building in Rockefeller Center with a portrait of Lenin. Rivera refused to remove the portrait from the mural, and the commission was canceled and the whole piece destroyed.Despite these controversies, Rivera's work proved to be the inspiration for Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration (WPA) program, which provided many unemployed artists with work during the 1930s. Rivera also continued to play a central role in the development of Mexican national art until his death in Mexico City in 1957.