Diego Rivera’s America

In his public murals and paintings, Diego Rivera painted human experience—families and workers, struggles and celebrations, histories and imagined futures. Between the early 1920s and the early 1940s, he worked in both Mexico and the United States and found inspiration in the social and cultural life of the two countries. He imagined an America—broadly understood—that shared an Indigenous past and an industrial future, and where cooperation, rather than divisions, were paramount.

Diego Rivera’s America, a new exhibition developed by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), examines this prolific time in the artist’s life through over 170 works, including his drawings, easel paintings, frescoes, and more. The first major exhibition focused solely on the Mexican artist in over 20 years, it reveals the broad range of Rivera’s work through a series of thematic sections that bring together more works from this time period than have been seen together since the artist’s lifetime.

The exhibition features iconic works such as Dance in Tehauantepec (1928), The Flowered Canoe (1931), Nude with Calla Lilies (1944) and other depictions of flower carriers and vendors, and three major paintings by Frida Kahlo, all done in San Francisco, including a self-portrait of her standing next to Rivera. The exhibition includes rarely seen works from private collections, major paintings on loan from museums in both the United States and Mexico, studies for pivotal mural projects in Mexico City, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York, as well as large-scale digital projections that convey the immersive quality of his epic murals.

This exhibition is organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).