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Diego Rivera The Italian Sketchbook, 1920–21 Diego Rivera The Italian Sketchbook, 1920–21 mary-anne martin fine art 23 east 73rd street 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 Arquin, Florence, Diego Rivera, The Angelina Beloff (Rivera’s first wife) Shaping of an Artist, 1889-1921, gift to Jean Charlot, 1945 University of Oklahoma Press, 1971, by descent to Martin Charlot, pp. 113–143 and ff. the artist’s son Exhibition catalogue for Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, Detroit Institute of exhibition history Arts (traveling exhibition), 1986, W.W. Diego Rivera, 50 Años de su Labor Artistico, Norton, New York, fig. 73, p. 52 in the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, catalogue (scaffold study). Mexico City, August–December 1949, Diego Rivera: Catálogo General de Obra de no. 192, illus. Caballete, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Diego Rivera: A Retrospective, Detroit Artes, Mexico, 1989, no. 347, p. 52. Institute of Arts, February 10–April 27, Marnham, Patrick, Dreaming with His 1986, no. 89, illus. Eyes Open: A Life of Diego Rivera, Alfred literature A. Knopf, 1998, pp. 147–152. Charlot, Jean, “Diego Rivera in Italy,” Hamill, Pete, Diego Rivera, Harry N. Magazine of Art, January 1953, pp. 3 – 10. Abrams, 1999, pp. 75–79. Charlot, Jean, The Mexican Mural Lozano, Luis-Martin, “Diego Rivera, Renaissance: 1920-1925, Yale University Classicus Sum,” essay in catalogue Press, 1963. 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 CONTENTS Introduction 8 Provenance and dedication page 11 Facsimile of The Italian Sketchbook with Diego Rivera’s annotations; translations and commentary by Jean Charlot 14 Reproduction of the original article by Jean Charlot, “Diego Rivera in Italy,” Magazine of Art, Vol. 46. No. 1, pp. 3–10 61 Credits and Acknowledgments 71 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 southern tip of the country, then back up Jean Charlot, Rivera on his First Mural, pen and ink, 1922 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 in- formed understanding of form and color to evoke a calculated emotion- al 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 pos- sessed 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 9 Angelina Beloff and Diego Rivera in Paris, ca. 1915 the provenance of this historic sketchbook, 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. 11 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 Diego Rivera, Portrait of Angelina, oil Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship, re- 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.” 13 “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.