Join Professor Lear as he discusses Rivera’s politics and mural art, with a focus on its significance to the histories of Mexico, the global left, and the United States. In the wake of the Mexican Revolution, Diego Rivera became one of the most famous painters in the world, as both his medium of public murals and his themes of popular culture and social transformation attracted new patrons, publics, and disciples. This communist artist’s reputation diminished during the Cold War, yet his life and art can tell us much about a period of revolutionary possibilities when artists and their art became important agents of social change. Dr. Lear’s books include Workers, Neighbor and Citizens: The Revolution in Mexico City (University of Nebraska Press, 2001) and Picturing the Proletariat: Artists and Labor in Revolutionary Mexico, 1908-1940 (University of Texas Press, 2017). He is currently writing a political biography of Diego Rivera for Verso Books.
Free and open to the public. Join on Zoom or in-person at the Olympia Center.
