NARA - National Archives and Records Administration
11/26/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 11/26/2024 11:11
Fragments of a Life: Diego Rivera through the Lens of the FBI
Today's post was written by Christina Violeta Jones, Archivist with the Special Access and FOIA Program at the National Archives at College Park, MD
"Each and every one of my murals contains the expression of my own personality"
Diego Rivera [1]
The National Archives' Special Access and FOIA Program recently made the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) case file on Mexican artist Diego Rivera (100-HQ-155423, v. 1 and Sub. A) [1] available online.
The FBI compiled case files to document criminal investigations but they can also be valuable sources of historical information on individual subjects since they typically contain considerable biographical information. However, it is important to keep in mind that the contents reflect the specific interests of law enforcement, rather than a broad or exhaustive accounting of a subject's life.
Born in Guadalajara City, Mexico, on December 8, 1886, Rivera became a prominent painter, known for his large frescoes. Although he was a world-renowned artist, his FBI file does not provide much insight into his art, nor is it a telenovela (Spanish soap opera) of his well-known marriages and infidelities. In fact, these facets of his life are mentioned only incidentally throughout the file. Instead, the investigation predominantly focused on Rivera's movements through the United States and his political involvement, particularly with the Communist Party, which was a primary focus of the FBI during his lifetime and the Cold War period.
By the mid-1920s, Rivera had established himself as a leader of the Mexican muralism movement. In 1927, the FBI opened a "domestic security" investigation (Classification 100) into Rivera, when he, a former Communist Party member and "sympathizer," was issued a non-immigration visa to travel to Germany via the United States.[2] His ultimate destination was the Soviet Union. The first part of the file provides a detailed play-by-play of Rivera's travels in the U.S., throughout which he remained under "close and discreet surveillance" by the FBI.[3]
According to a source, Rivera stated that he was on an "important mission" for Mexican presidents Álvaro Obregón Salido (1920-1924) and Plutarco Elías Calles (1924-1928) "to the United States and Russia," with the purpose to initiate a Communist "propaganda campaign in the United States."[4] The file notes Rivera's trip across the United States then to the Soviet Union, having accepted an invitation to take part in the Russian celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution.[5]
Rivera expressed his political views very explicitly through his art, which included depictions of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and workers struggles. A highly publicized controversy erupted In the spring of 1933, when John D. Rockefeller commissioned Rivera to work on a fresco for the new RCA Building (today's Rockefeller Center), but halted the project when Rivera added an image of Vladimir Lenin's face to the mural without approval. Rivera's response to the decision was: "those who gave me the work…knew perfectly well my artistic tendencies and my social and political opinions."[6] The media reported that several artists and writers signed a letter demanding that the mural be completed. Around the same time, Rivera spoke at a protest calling for the reinstatement of Donald Henderson, a Columbia University professor who was alleged to have been not hired back because of revolutionary and Communistic beliefs. Rivera argued that Henderson's firing was similar to his recent situation with the Radio City murals. Despite protests, Henderson was never reinstated and Rivera's Man at the Crossroads murals were covered up and eventually destroyed in February 1934. Despite being highly-publicized, coverage of these events in the FBI file is limited to two press clippings.
The FBI file focuses more on Rivera's political membership and contacts outside of his art. Rivera was a dedicated Communist Party member beginning in the 1920s. According to his FBI file, on April 26, 1925, he renounced his membership in the Mexican Communist Party requesting that he be considered "a sympathizer."[7] In 1929, when the former Soviet leader Leon Trotsky was forced into exile, Rivera and his wife at the time Mexican painterFrida Kahlo, petitioned the Mexican government to host him as their guest.[8] However, later in the file we learn that he was actually expelled from the party, because his "own ideas were not the ideas of the Communist Party."[9] Rivera continued to make several attempts to readmit himself into the Mexican Communist Party.[10] He was finally successful in 1955.
Although the FBI documents the complexities of Rivera's political life, it contains very little information on his personal life, despite having been married four times.[11] His first wife Angelina Beloff is not referenced at all and his second wife Guadalupe Marin is only cited once.[12] His third and most well-known marriage to Kahlo is barely mentioned in the file with only passing references describing her simply as a "Russian painter" and "more Communist even than Diego."[13] What we know from other sources is that Rivera met Kahlo sometime around 1928 when she joined the Mexican Communist Party. They were married twice, first from 1929 to 1939 and then again from 1940 until her death. There is one reference in the file to an "alleged" romance between Kahlo and Richard Arias Vinas, a Spanish refugee who had resided in Mexico in the mid-1940s, but nothing regarding her involvement with Trotsky, which only added to the already existing complex relationship she had with Rivera.[14] When Kahlo died on July 13, 1954, Rivera stated, "her death was the most tragic day of my life."[15] A significant life event that again is not referenced at all in his FBI file. Also not cited are Rivera's extramarital affairs. Again the file only contains incidental mentions of the artist's mistresses, which included Christina Kahlo, Frida's sister; art assistant Irene Bohus; and Paulette Goodard, wife of entertainer Charlie Chaplin, who helped Rivera escape Mexico in 1940 due to him being a suspect in the assassination attempt against Trotsky.[16] After Frida's death, according to the press, he secretly married his art dealer, Emma Hurtado.[17]
The FBI file continued to document his travels, particularly to the Soviet Union, noting that he traveled there in August 1955 to receive cancer treatment and later stated that "he had been cured by the Soviet physicians utilizing a Cobalt treatment."[18] One of the last documents in the file is a June 1957 letter by Rivera expressing impassioned pleas to suspend nuclear bomb tests and prohibit the "manufacture and use of the thermonuclear weapon for the collective destruction of humanity."[19]
No charges were ever brought against Rivera as a result of the FBI investigation, and the file ended abruptly in 1957, presumably due to Rivera's death on November 24 of that year at the age of 70, although his passing is not mentioned in the file.[20]
As the example of Rivera shows, FBI investigative case files can be a valuable source of information, but do not always tell the complete story of an individual's life.
Thank you to Jeffery Hartley, NARA's Librarian for providing access to secondary resources and to the Special Access and FOIA staff.
For Related Archival Records on Diego Rivera at the National Archives:
For Related blogs at the National Archives:
[1] Diego Rivera quoted in a newspaper article in FBI file 100-HQ-155423, vol. 1, pgs. 51-52.
[2] 100-HQ-1554323-X
[3] 100-HQ-1554323-X2
[4] 100-HQ-1554323-10
[5] 100-HQ-1554323X to 100-HQ-1554323-12. The following year, while still in the Soviet Union, Rivera met Alfred H. Barr Jr., who would soon become his friend and financier. Barr was the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. See Rona Roob, "Alfred H. Barr Jr.: A Chronicle of the Years 1902-1929." The New Criterion, special summer issue, (1987), pp. 1-19. Also see https://www.moma.org/interactives/moma_through_time/1920/alfred-h-barr-jr-selected-as-first-director/ and https://www.moma.org/research/archives/finding-aids/Barrf; In 1928, Rivera was commissioned to paint a mural for the Red Army Club in Moscow. Diego Rivera and Gladys March, My Life, Life: An Autobiography (New York: Dover Publications, 1960).
[6] Allison McNearney, "When Nelson Rockefeller Killed Diego Rivera's Communist Mural: Nelson Rockefeller commissioned Diego Rivera to paint a mural for Rockefeller Center, but the end result proved too political to stay on the walls." The Daily Beast, December 24, 2016.
[7] 100-HQ-155423-X
[8] 100-HQ-155423, pg. 51. From January 1937 to April 1939, Trotsky and his wife lived in the Coyoacán at La Casa Azul, the home of Kahlo and Rivera. Trotsky had an affair with Kahlo's. She later presented him with the famous "Self-Portrait Dedicated to Leon Trotsky"on his birthday which fell on the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. The famous painting from Kahlo to Trotsky is housed at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C. See Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Penguin Random House Grupo USA, 2020).
[9] 100-HQ-155423, pg. 69
[10] 100-HQ-155423-4 and 100-HQ-155423-7
[11] 100-HQ-155423-6 - The file references several mistresses of Diego Rivera. Christina Kahlo, Frida's sister, Paulette Goodard, wife of entertainer Charlie Chaplin, and art assistant, Irene Bohus.
[12] 100-HQ-155423, pg. 59
[13] 100-HQ-155423, pgs. 57 & 73. Kahlo was born in Mexico.
[14] 100-HQ-155423, pg. 78.
[15] Hayden Herrera, Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo (Penguin Random House Grupo USA, 2020).
[16] 100-HQ-155423, pgs. 71 & 73.
[17] Emma Hurtado, was Rivera's agent as well as a writer, gallery owner, and painter.
[18] 100-HQ-155423-18
[19] 100-HQ-155423-19 and 100-HQ-155423-20 (duplicate copy)
[20] "Diego Rivera Dies in Mexico at 70." (1957, Nov 25). New York Times (1923-)