Diego Rivera

The Italian Sketchbook, 1920 –21

Diego Rivera The Italian Sketchbook, 1920 –21

mary-anne martin fine art 23 eas t 73rd s treet new york, ny 10021

This catalogue accompanies the exhibition Diego Rivera: The Italian Sketchbook 1920–21, which will be presented at Master Drawings New York 2013. On view at the gallery January 25–February 22, 2013. Mary-Anne Martin | Fine Art 23 East 73rd Street New York, NY 10021 Tel: (212) 288-2213 Fax: (212) 861-7656 [email protected] www.mamfa.com

Cover: Diego Rivera in Paris, c. 1920 collection inba, casa diego rivera, guanajuato

Diego Rivera The Italian Sketchbook Pencil, conté crayon and ink on paper 30 drawings on 28 pages unbound, dimensions variable 1920–21 provenance Angelina Beloff (Rivera’s first wife) gift to Jean Charlot, 1945 by descent to Martin Charlot, the artist’s son exhibition history Diego Rivera, 50 Años de su Labor Artistico, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City, August–December 1949, no. 192, illus. Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, Detroit Institute of Arts, February 10–April 27, 1986, no. 89, illus.

Arquin, Florence, Diego Rivera, The Shaping of an Artist, 1889-1921, University of Oklahoma Press, 1971, pp. 113–143 and ff. Exhibition catalogue for Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, Detroit Institute of Arts (traveling exhibition), 1986, W.W. Norton, New York, fig. 73, p. 52 in the catalogue (scaffold study). Diego Rivera: Catálogo General de Obra de Caballete, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico, 1989, no. 347, p. 52.

literature

Marnham, Patrick, Dreaming with His Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera, Alfred A. Knopf, 1998, pp. 147–152.

Charlot, Jean, “Diego Rivera in Italy,” Magazine of Art, January 1953, pp. 3 – 10.

Hamill, Pete, Diego Rivera, Harry N. Abrams, 1999, pp. 75–79.

Charlot, Jean, The Mexican Mural Renaissance: 1920-1925, Yale University Press, 1963.

Lozano, Luis-Martin, “Diego Rivera, Classicus Sum,” essay in catalogue of the exhibition Diego Rivera Art & Revolution, Cleveland Museum of Art (traveling exhibition), 1999, pp. 129–157.

Our thanks to Martin Charlot, who entrusted this sketchbook to our care.

TABLE OF CON TE N TS

Introduction

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Provenance and dedication page

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Facsimile of The Italian Sketchbook with Diego Rivera’s annotations; translations and commentary by Jean Charlot

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Reproduction of the original article by Jean Charlot, “Diego Rivera in Italy,” Magazine of Art, Vol. 46. No. 1, pp. 3–10

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Credits and Acknowledgments

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introduction In 1907, Diego Rivera, a 24 year-old prodigy from Mexico, arrived in Spain to begin a four year scholarship to study painting in Europe. Thirteen years later, after befriending Picasso, Modigliani, Gris, Léger, and Carlo Carrà and having integrated the principles of Cubism into his paintings, Rivera was offered the position of chief mural painter of Mexico by the Mexican government. Rivera accepted the appointment on the condition that they first pay him to take “the Italian tour” before returning to Mexico. Over a period of 17 months, from Winter 1920 to Spring 1921, he followed the itinerary developed for him by his friend and mentor, the art historian Elie Faure, traveling from Ravenna to the Jean Charlot, Rivera on his First Mural, pen and ink, 1922

southern tip of the country, then back up the eastern coast. Rivera sketched as he viewed the frescoes and paintings of the

Renaissance, making handwritten notes directly on his drawings. He was keenly interested in the relationship between painting and architecture, putting his observations of Italian Renaissance frescoes to brilliant use in the masterpieces he painted later on the walls of the Ministry of Education in Mexico City, Rockefeller Center in New York, and the Detroit Institute 8

of Arts. In translating the formal ideas and fresco techniques of painters like Giotto, Uccello and Tintoretto to his mural projects in Mexico and the U.S., Rivera provided the art historical link between the Italian Renaissance and Twentieth Century Muralism in the Americas. Writing of this period in Rivera’s life, Florence Arquin observes: His studies in Italy rewarded him with an understanding of the great mural tradition of the Renaissance. There he acquired an awareness of the basic architectural character of murals and of the prerequisite need for direct, simple statement and organization, as well as an equally informed understanding of form and color to evoke a calculated emotional response. He was challenged and invigorated as he examined Italy’s legacy of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman cultures which had endowed the Renaissance with its humanistic qualities and forceful tradition of realism. . . . It was the humanism inherent in the Renaissance emphasis upon mankind in general and the individual in particular . . . that drew Rivera to the Italian masters . . . That these qualities should have possessed a powerful appeal for Rivera is attributable not only to his own political and social sympathies—founded largely in the liberal beliefs of his father and his teacher Posada—but also because they now coincided with Rivera’s own emotional, intellectual, and philosophic convictions.* * Diego Rivera, The Shaping of an Artist, 1889–1921, Oklahoma, 1971, p. 179

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Angelina Beloff and Diego Rivera in Paris, ca. 1915

t h e p rov e n a n c e o f t h i s h i s to r i c s k etc h b o o k , exhibited in its entirety for the first time in 92 years, is extraordinary. It was given by Rivera to his first [common law] wife, Angelina Beloff, with whom he lived in Paris from 1909 to 1921, when he returned to Mexico. In 1916 Angelina bore him his first child, a son they nicknamed “Dieguito” (little Diego). During her pregnancy and after the baby was born, Rivera painted a series of cubist portraits of Angelina. These tender “Maternities” record a period of domesticity that was tragically ended for the couple when the child perished at the age of a year and four months, from bronchitis and pneumonia. Angelina, who never remarried, moved to Mexico in 1932 where she painted, taught art, and had a number of exhibitions. She died in 1969. During her years in Paris, the Russian-born artist moved easily among the expatriate artists who lived and worked in the early decades of the 20th century. Among the artists in her circle and whose career would lead him to Mexico, was the talented artist, Jean Charlot. Born in Paris in 1898, his father was Russian-French and his mother was of Mexican descent. Charlot moved to Mexico City in 1921, and became part of the Mexican mural renaissance. He was assistant to his famous colleague, Diego Rivera, and worked side by side with Orozco, Siqueiros, Fernando Leal and many others.

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Dedication page, Italian Sketchbook Angelina Beloff in friendship to Jean Charlot to better conserve these drawings

Charlot’s history of those seminal first years, The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920–1925, is filled with intimate details and insights that could only be told by one who was there when it actually happened. Included is a very frank and amusing account of a critic’s adverse review of Charlot’s first mural in the National Preparatory School, “The Massacre in the Main Temple,” and a scathing commentary on the same mural by his friend Rivera. Ironically, Charlot’s mural was the first work of the 20th century Mexican mural movement completed in true fresco; Rivera’s Creation mural of 1922–23 was executed in encaustic. It was in 1945, when Charlot was in Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship, re-

Diego Rivera, Portrait of Angelina, oil on canvas, 1916

searching and writing The Mexican Mural Renaissance, that Angelina gave him this precious Diego Rivera sketchbook,“in friendship to Jean Charlot, to better conserve these drawings.”

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“It seems as if one is looking at a thing of père Cézanne, painted in casein. The grain of the canvas is much in evidence and one feels how the brush, agile and hurried, acts with the rather liquid pigment. There is no varnish whatsoever. Perhaps the coat of varnish was added after the canvas was put up in position? Perhaps one worked slightly with glazes in the fresh varnish to harmonize once the thing was done?” Notes on color scattered over the drawing: “Earth-red with accent of pure vermilion. Orpiment yellow. Cold neutral tone. Green warm and transparent. Blue-grey identical to that of père Cézanne.” *

Tintoretto, Fragment of Sala dell’Albergo ceiling decoration, Scuola de San Rocco, Venice, 1565–67

* This and subsequent quotes and commentary are from Jean Charlot’s translation and annotation of Rivera’s handwritten notes in the margins of his sketches. See Jean Charlot: Diego Rivera in Italy, Magazine of Art, January, 1953.

Diego Rivera

Sketch after Tintoretto’s Fragment of Sala dell’Albergo ceiling decoration Pencil on paper 5 x 8 inches Venice, 1920–21

In Verona, Rivera called “magnificent” Bonsignori’s Madonna, steeped in Mantegna’s spirit. In Rivera’s sketch, the infant Christ, sterner than in Bonsignori’s painting, lies forlornly on the slablike cube of cubism on the esthetic rack of scientific perspective.

Francesco Bonsignori, La Madonna con il Bambino, 1481, Museo del Castelvecchio, Verona

Diego Rivera

Sketch after Bonsignori’s La Madonna con il Bambino Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Verona, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of unidentified Madonna with notes and date of 1487 Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Italy, 1920–21

The note scribbled in the margin of the sketch is partly autobiographical: “Surface composition with golden section, the half and square of the picture. Mediocre painter. Construction depending too much on foreshortenings and accidental postures in depth, stressing surface lines. Try to avoid this defect; danger for myself.”

Diego Rivera

Sketch after a work by Giovanni Caroto Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Verona, 1920–21

“Excellent surface composition. Birds the size of angels, angels the size of live birds. St. Catherine seemingly feeds a bird while receiving from an angel the palm of martyrdom. Angels’ heads are as big as are the roses in the mystical rosebush of Stefano da Verona. “The Virgin and Child. All is gold outside of paradise. Within, all idea of optical scale is destroyed and all is in the spiritual order. It is extremely truthful and gentle.”

Stefano di Zevio, Madonna with St. Catherine in a Rose Garden, c. 1425–35, Museo Civico, Verona

Diego Rivera Sketch after Stefano di Zevio’s Madonna with St. Catherine in a Rose Garden Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Verona, 1920–21

“Quite close to the window. A picture in which the composition is arrived at by color, determined by the effect and dynamism of the physical light.”

Tintoretto, Three Graces and Mercury, Doge’s Palace, Venice

Diego Rivera Sketch after Tintoretto’s Three Graces and Mercury, 1454–57 Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Venice, 1920–21

Rivera’s sketch after Mantegna recalls the murals of Padua with the hallucinatory bulk of their Roman architecture—perhaps, more specifically, the Baptism of Hermogenes. Rivera noted on this sketch: “Construction where the actual painting of the surface follows guidelines relating to depth; thus creating a surface harmony shot through in make-believe style by the architecture. The frightening relief does not violate the surface.”

Andrea Mantegna, The Baptism of Hermogenes, 1454–57, Ovetari Chapel, Church of the Eremitani (destoryed 1944), Padua

Diego Rivera Sketch after Mantegna’s Baptism of Hermogenes Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Padua, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch after a work by Titian Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch after an unidentified architectural subject Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch after an unidentified architectural subject Pencil on paper 5 x 8 inches Italy, 1920–21

Tintoretto, Allegory: Justice and Venice Offering Sword and Scales to the Doge Girolamo Priuli, c. 1559–1560, Doge’s Palace, Venice

Diego Rivera

Sketch after Tintoretto’s Allegory: Justice and Venice… Pencil on paper 5 x 8 inches Italy, 1920–21

That the artist was not craning his neck in idle awe of the unattainable is proved by his very practical sketch of a mural scaffold: “A scaffold for working on ceilings, very simple to move by sliding it over planks greased with lard, slipped under the front legs raised by means of wooden screw-levers. “To apply the canvas to the ceiling it is raised from the ground in this way, after having fixed the suspending screws in place very exactly by trial with the stretcher alone. The scaffold is put back in place after that.”

Top: Scaffolding used by Rivera to paint “Creation” mural, Bolivar Auditorium, Mexico City, 1922 Above: Diego Rivera working on “Creation” mural, Bolivar Auditorium, Mexico City, 1922. Photo Tina Modotti

Diego Rivera

Sketch of scaffolding in Italy showing details of its construction Pencil on paper 5 x 8 inches Italy, 1920–21

The drawings he made on this relatively short journey confirm that Rivera went in search of public and monumental art, in other words, the art in churches and decorated civil buildings that was directed toward the masses. He particularly observed the mosaics at San Apollinare Nuovo in Ravenna, frescos and countless religious paintings. Luis-Martin Lozano, Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution, excerpts from the catalogue, p. 150

Diego Rivera

Sketch of an unidentified church interior Pencil on paper 8 x 5 inches Italy, 1920–21

Ravenna, Orthodox Baptistery Dome, The Apostle Peter from the Procession of the Apostles, mosaic, c. 430–458

Diego Rivera

Sketch after The Apostle Peter from the Procession of the Apostles Ink on paper 8 x 5 inches Ravenna, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a woman (recto) 61⁄16 x 43⁄8 inches Ink on scored paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Figure at table (verso) 61⁄16 x 43⁄8 inches Ink on scored paper Italy, 1920–21

In Italy he devoted his time studying works that would be useful for future mural projects. . . . His drawings from this trip still reveal the influence of the avant-garde; although he mostly depicted religious subjects, his drawing method was conceived with a surprising capacity for synthesis, always recalling the analytical faculties of a good Cubist painter. . . . His use of line was quick but self secure, firm and precise. It captured the exact structure of his subject and contained great expressiveness. Luis-Martin Lozano, Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution, excerpts from the catalogue, p. 152

Diego Rivera

Italian landscape 5 x 8 inches Ink on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Italian landscape 5 x 8 inches Ink on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Italian landscape 5 x 8 inches Ink on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a woman with hat 5⅝ x 4¾ inches Pencil on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Two sketches of women 5 x 8 inches Pencil on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of two heads 5 x 8 inches Conté crayon on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a man with color notations 5 x 8 inches Ink and conté crayon on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Pensive woman, two studies 5 x 8 inches Ink on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a fashionable woman 5 x 8 inches Conté crayon on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a woman 5 x 8 inches Conté crayon on paper Italy, 1920–21

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a woman with tall hat 8 x 5 inches Pencil on paper Italy, 1920–21

Venus and Venus Celeste, female Etruscan clay figures, Louvre Museum, Paris

Diego Rivera Sketch of Etruscan figures 8 x 5 inches Ink on paper Italy, 1920–21

Notes by Rivera: “Archaic temple; the framework is ungainly and no longer has a roof. What giantess perched on this balustrade? An image of birds rising in a whirling vortex.”

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a building with palm trees (recto) 14¾ x 18⅞ inches Pencil on scored paper Italy, 1920–21

In Paris, Rivera had drawn a series of heads keenly observed— The Nun, The Laborer, The Widow, The Bureaucrat, The Boss—with a touch of nineteenth century humor á la Grandville or á la Cham. On the Italian trip, he also made a few sketches in this realistic vein, such as one of a female addict giving herself a hypodermic.

Diego Rivera

Sketch of a drug addict (verso) 14¾ x 18⅞ inches Pencil on scored paper Italy, 1920–21

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copyright © 2013 mary-anne martin | fine art   jean charlot drawing (p. 8), “rivera on his first mural” copyright © the jean charlot estate llc. with permission.   jean charlot, “diego rivera in italy” copyright © 1953 the jean charlot estate llc. with permission.   diego rivera “the italian sketchbook” reproduced by permission of martin charlot   additional research and photography by deborah roan   catalogue design by lawrence sunden, inc.

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