Dreaming With His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera - Hardcover

Marnham, Patrick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747531080 ISBN 13: 9780747531081

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 1998

Synopsis

A biography of one of the great muralists of the 20th century, which brings the art, the politics and the complexity of Rivera into focus. The book demonstrates that just as Rivera mythologized himself, the artist also endowed the Mexican people with a national myth, melding a troubled revolutionary history and an Indian culture.

About this title

Review:

In his splendid study of this important 20th-century painter, Patrick Marnham has doggedly hacked his way through the many myths and abundant misinformation about Diego Rivera. (Much of it, admittedly, put about by Rivera himself.) Set mostly in the nightmarish world of post-Russian Revolution communism, Rivera's tortuous artistic, political, and personal lives are stylishly laid bare. The deadly machinations of Stalinists, Trotskyists, and dozens of other variations are patiently explained. Complex cultural strands, particularly in his native Mexico, are subtly drawn out and the personalities vividly brought to life. Trotsky plays his part as does D.H. Lawrence alongside a constantly changing cast of wives and lovers.

Marnham solidly charts the development of the artist as a revolutionary painter and identifies, controversially, his first wife, Lupe, as his chief muse (as opposed to Frida Kahlo whom he married twice). The book also contains some delicious colour plates of his stunning frescos that display better than any words can just what a visionary and powerful painter he was. The facts of Rivera's life have been for too long obscured by the events of the extraordinary times in which he operated and the remarkable circles in which he moved. Dreaming With his Eyes Open tells it how it was. It will surely become the definitive life. --Nick Wroe

Review:

"At last, a full-length biography of the Mexican painter and muralist Diego Rivera. . . "--"London Review of Books

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0747531080
• ISBN 13: 9780747531081
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 289