DIA: Diego and Frida Special Exhibit

Rivera Murals

Perspective-TALL murals in Rivera Court

Right now there is a special Diego and Frida exhibit at the DIA which I highly recommend and which would be less meaningful in another museum as Diego and Frida spent a year in Detroit. After attending the exhibit we walked downstairs to view the DIA's Rivera murals - we are lucky as most of his murals are in Mexico.

Unfortunately I could not take photos of the special exhibit, so the pictures below are of Detroit Industry, the Rivera Court murals which focus on factory and industry.

These mural shows factory workers whom Rivera studied at the Ford Rouge River plant in the 1930s.

Having only seen Rivera's DIA murals (a must if you visit Detroit), I was excited to see his additional paintings and studies. I enjoyed the bright colors and the simple forms and compositions of Rivera's paintings of his Mexican people (everyday working). I wish I had a picture I coudl share, I noticed and loved that Rivera painted feet as rectangles with circle toes! Simplistic but somehow lovely.

I'd seen Kahlo's work before and not understood/appreciated it. Frankly it took this exhibit for me to understand her and to "get" that she transitioned her pain into her art. Her miscarriage at Henry Ford Hospital led to her famous hospital bed painting, an ugly but truthful painting, which some say was a catalyst to her art career. Her paintings were tiny as compared to Diego's large murals -the hospital painting maybe a little larger than 11x 14? The miscarriage also led to a change in the DIA Rivera murals as well. Instead of an Agricultural mural (we saw Rivera's agriculture sketch for that mural in the exhibit), Diego painted a baby in a womb. I had wondered why there was a baby amongst the industry and factory murals.

Additionally, I loved seeing Rivera's preliminary sketches - one of which filled an entire wall. I would guess the image was 10 feet tall by 30 feet long (where does one get such large paper)? The image of the man lying on his side was HUGE, covering the fulll length of the 30 foot paper! The actual image on the mural is very high up so you would not ever know how large the image is in real life. The dark figure in the top right is the one from the sketch, but you cannot tell how big that figure is, can you?

How extraordinary that Diego Rivera created the murals 83 years ago in a mere 11 months! The murals are incredibly large and complex. Today I would assume that an artist would command more time to paint this grand room. The exhibit also showed photos of the Court walls pre-mural - boring! Now, with the murals, the walls are huge historic works of art that are interesting and unique.

If you go to the special Diego and Frida Exhibit, be sure to buy tickets in advance (it was crowded), also be sure to plan time to go downstairs to Rivera Court afterwards! Go soon, the special exhibit ends in early July.