My Art, My Life

by Diego Rivera, Gladys March

A richly revealing document offering many telling insights into the mind and heart of a giant of 20th-century art. "There is no lack of exciting material. A lover at nine, a cannibal at 18, by his own account, Rivera was prodigiously productive of art and controversy." — San Francisco Chronicle. 21 halftones.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Autobiography, Biography Memoir, School

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 14, 1992

About the author

Diego Rivera y Barrientos, father of Guadalupe Rivera Marín, ex-husband of Angelina Beloff and Guadalupe Marín; and husband of Frida Kahlo.

Reviews

[Ellice · Rating 5 out of 5]

Diego Rivera is a horrible liar. It is exceedingly difficult to believe his version of things: that he lost his virginity at age 9, he had an affair with a married woman at 12 or 13, he escaped from a police dragnet while being framed by Leon Trotsky for an attempt on his life, and that his doctor assured Rivera and one of his several wives that some men "were simply incapable of sexual fidelity" and that Rivera was one of those.

However, if you are wondering if all that is as interesting as it sounds--it IS.

The book was transcribed and reorganized from interviews with Rivera by Gladys March, a young American woman, and it is in the form of 80-some short vignettes. Almost all are fascinating.

If you are looking for truth, probably best to skip this one. If you're looking for possibly the most exciting autobiography you've ever read, start it today.

[Owen Hatherley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining, often clearly mythical, and would probably have been much better if 'written' twenty years earlier: but by this time we're dealing with a Stalinist dirty old man with (apparently, actual) dick cancer, and the anecdotes proceed accordingly.

[Adam · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great read. Lines are blurred between truth and exaggeration as Rivera recounts stories to an American. Describes encounters with corrupt politicians, mistresses, fascists, and other figures of intrigue. A nice glimpse into the heady times of artistic and political revolution in Mexico. Like the works themselves, Rivera is incredibly unpretentious in his descriptions of his work. He expanded my appreciation for his work as he describes the importance of indigenous sources of inspiration and denounces artistic contemporaries whose concerns were overly theoretical.

[Richard R]

If this was a soap opera, I suspect a script editor would have rejected the drafts as overly fantastical and one has to assume that Rivera was winding Gladys March up with a lot of this. Here's a few highlights of what I mean:

- Finding himself suspicious of his mother's account of how babies are made, the young Rivera decides to dissect a pregnant mouse in order to find out for himself, thereby driving his mother into a fit after confronting her with his findings.
- As a teenager, Rivera gives a sermon on the non-existence of god to an outraged congregation, causing the Priest to flee from the demonic youth.
- Practising human cannibalism for a few years after seeing how well it worked for some cats who later escaped from their dubious residence before invading a lunatic asylum.
- Watching President Hindenburg perform druidic rituals at a Grunewald ceremony.
- Being suspect of attempting to assassinate Trotsky. Twice.
- Making failed attempts to assassinate Porfirio Diaz and Hitler, the latter due to being restrained by some rather complacent German communists.
- The Kahlo family seem to have handled assassination attempts on their lives rather well, as Frida's sister apprehends two Nazi assassins at gunpoint and Frida goes one better by doing the same to four assassins sent by General Cedillo.
- There are also appearances by Sorolla, Picasso, Chaplin, Rockefeller and Stalin.

[Miriam · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great tall tale in which Diego always does and says the right thing. If anything goes wrong, he eventually manages to put it right or to accept defeat with dignity. He's funny and engaging and I believe about a tenth of it--mostly the part about what he wanted his murals to achieve and the meaning in his work. The appendix has statements by all four wives, most of whom indicate the centrality of his art in his life, to the point that it was really to that that he was faithful. Fair enough. The truth is in the art, and the stories are good stories.

[Cristobal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hasta donde sé, hay dos "autobiografías" de Diego Rivera, la primera escrita por Loló de la Torriente basándose en una serie de pláticas y entrevistas que tuvo con Rivera, y la segunda es esta, de la autoría de Gladys March que al igual que la de Loló se basa en pláticas de ella con Rivera.

Pese a ser autobiográfico, el libro de Loló está narrado en tercera persona y abarca hasta que Diego Rivera viaja a Rusia y se divorcia de Lupe Marín, posteriormente, en un último capítulo, ella cuenta el resto de la vida de Rivera, pero sin contar con la participación directa de Rivera; esto me hace pensar que Rivera y Loló en algún momento concluyeron su relación y posteriormente Rivera volvió a intentar escribir su autobiografía, esta vez a través de Gladys. A diferencia de Loló, Gladys acertadamente decide narrar la vida de Diego en primera persona, también termina sus pláticas con Rivera meses antes de su muerte, con lo cual alcanza un panorama completo de la vida de Rivera.

Gladys hace un resumen breve (basta comparar las 200 páginas del libro contra las más de 700 escritas por Loló) de las anécdotas de Rivera, eligiendo los momentos más emblemáticos, lo que hace que el libro sea muy divertido y ameno, y si bien hay algunas anécdotas algo increíbles, en su mayoría todas parecieran ser verídicas. Por otro lado, Loló escribe con mucho mayor detalle, orden y estructura la vida de Diego, casi todas las anécdotas del libro de Gladys, de la primera mitad de la vida de Rivera, se encuentran en el de Loló, complementadas por un trabajo mucho más riguroso de recopilación de las historias de Rivera.

Ambos libros son geniales, si lo que se busca es una aproximación más completa y estructurada de la vida de Rivera, el libro de Loló es la mejor opción, mientras que si se busca un trabajo más divertido y anecdótico, el de Gladys es mejor. Para un panorama realmente completo, la lectura de ambos es imprescindible.

[Caroline Rose · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Very dramatic, spun with elaborate tall tales which can’t be discerned from truth.

If there were ever a testament to the fact that appearance doesn’t matter to women in the face of charm and talent, it’s Mr. Rivera. He’s absolutely hideous, yet had women fighting for his affections his entire adult life.

Diego is an atrocious misogynist. He claims to have eaten human corpses with a cohort of anatomy students, and to have preferred eating women - their legs, breasts, breaded ribs, and brains in vinaigrette. He admits to having abandoned a daughter of a mistress and denied his paternity for his entire life, providing no support or contact. He left his first wife home alone to care for their dying baby son and went to various events during that time. Plainly, he was a bad person.

He contributed greatly to the proletarian revolutionary consciousness with his murals across the globe.

Honestly the fact that he could reconcile being a communist and a horrible misogynist is for me evidence of the need for proletarian feminism. No man should be allowed to hold those two contradictions without severe retribution. He of course never extended his ideas around labor to the domestic, reproductive, or nurturing labor of women - who he treated as disposable sex objects and personal servants.

[Valentina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fun book made into some 80 short stories, very entertaining, but hard to define what is the truth, what is fiction, and what is a lie. Diego Rivera was a mythomaniac and full of himself. I love his art, his paintings are magnificent and controversial, he is less magnificent as a person and lacks morality, as he admits. I doubted he was sincerely remorseful in his behavior towards his four wives. He was adulterous and neglected them, particularly mistreated Frida Kahlo who apparently was the love of his life. She wrote some beautiful essays on him and are included in the back of the book. If you like a book of intrigues, gossip, and highly fabricated stories, this is it.

[Hit No · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a mix of a fiction and an (auto)biography. Diego Rivera was a classic mythomane.
I enjoyed his impossible-to-confirm stories and ‘lies’ like a kid listening stories about Santa Clause.
Book is a beautiful collection of short stories and anecdotes from his life and many other people, like Frida Kahlo, Picasso, Hitler, Stalin, Charlie Chaplin, Ford, Rockefeller, Mussolini, ....
Pure fun and pleasure with some art and a hint of history and delivered thru a really unique character.

[Ernest Hogan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A mural painted with words. Real--though mythomanical--life that reads like fantastic fiction. How magical can realism be?

[Carrie Turner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting.

[Nina Luo · Rating 5 out of 5]

diego rivera is more or less lying throughout this book and that's what it makes so fun! tall tales, sex, love, communism, war, etc. all with an unreliable narrator who's got a big ego

[Diana Goldfarb · Rating 5 out of 5]

It’s nice to know about the meaning of the murals he painted but as other readers have mentioned, it’s hard to believe everything that he claimed on the book.

[Anton Forte · Rating 3 out of 5]

Farfetched and a little sensational, it's a beautiful book and a great insight into an amazing muralist and artist.

[Sherry Stouffer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give it 3.5 stars if I could. Did not care for the early life stories but the stories surrounding his art and relationships make it more than worth not enjoying the early pieces.

[Naoise · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting read and an entertaining one, a great inside view on an interesting personality and an influential character, only tainted by the continuous suspicion on the veracity of some parts: it reminded me of the movie Forrest Gump where the protagonist happens to be a key component to everything important that happens. Even the author, Gladys March, warns in her preface that he may have contributed to grow his own legend.

I didn't know much about Rivera and this book makes him justice by showing how an influential person he was. And, even though it's an autobiography and what I mentioned earlier, it is written in a humble way, putting more attention on describing the meaning of his paintings and what his thoughts are on different political and cultural subjects through his life. He also touches here and there on the subject of morality, of which he says he lacks entirely. You can also see how he took the opportunity of publishing this book to have the last word on his many vendettas.

At first it surprised me that an autobiography by a Mexican person would not be in Spanish, but it turns out it's written by Gladys March using transcriptions of interviews done to Diego. I don't know how much is Diego and how much is Gladys, but the writing and the pace are perfect. I am not one for autobiographies (or biographies) and I loved this one.

It's not only a great read and a great portrait of one of the most important artists of the 20th century, but also a portrait of an interesting time in art and politics and a beautiful country, Mexico, and its people.

[Eafeder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Probably the most eventful autobiography you will ever read (and nice and short!), from cannibalism to attempted assassinations, political exile to multiple marriages and numerous affairs in between. There is a lot here that is probably exaggerated or made up. For example, I doubt he gave a speech about atheism at the age of 6. It's over the top, but so it seems was Rivera. He seems to purposefully craft his stories to create an image of himself as a man of the people and a lone voice for truth. This comes across in the description of his artistic philosophy which was to paint subjects well known to and in places accessible to the public, facing several controversies along the way. In one famed example, he depicts Lenin in his mural for Nelson Rockefeller in New York, who then orders it be destroyed when Rivera refuses to remove the image. In another story, he goes to see Hitler give a speech in the early 30s, and of course he is the only one of his friends who sees the danger in what is being said. In fairness, there are public records of him speaking out against Nazism. One of the few parts in which he admits fault is in the neglectful and adulterous behavior towards his four wives, although he shows true remorse for how it affected them, particularly Frida Kahlo who really appeared to be the love of his life.
The entangling of fact and myth is part of what makes this autobiography so fascinating. Rivera truly was larger than life.

[Jeaninne Escallier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though I read this book fifteen years ago, I like to revisit treasured books to activate my literary passions. Diego Rivera's art captured my imagination; enough so that I wrote a children's book (Manuel's Murals) as a dedication to his art. In this autobiography, as transcribed by Gladys March from hundreds of hours of interview tapes, Diego does not hold back about his art and his life. It is universally known that Diego was a great storyteller, who lived for the embellishments that added that extra spice to his stories. Much of the fluff in this little tome, should be discarded as major truths, keeping in mind that the big events in his life were true- the history of his major art education in Europe, his impact on modern art with respect to the plastic arts, and his tumultuous political adventures as a card-carrying Communist, to name a few. However, the flavor that was Diego, one of the twentieth century's greatest artists, makes for a fascinating read. One of his wives, Frida Kahlo, is more fascinating to me as a person and an artist, but if you fancy either Diego or Frida, you must know both their stories because their love transcended her physical pain and his insatiable thirst to bed other women. If you take away anything from this book, you must research his work to see the true intent of the man. Diego revolutionized the plight of the common man through his art.

[Matteo Baggio · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dopo aver letto la biografia di Frida Kahlo della Herrera, nella quale la figura di Rivera emerge in tutta l’ossessione che lei provava nei suoi confronti, non potevo non leggere la biografia di quello che si può considerare il più grande e influente artista messicano del secolo scorso. Il libro è parcellizzato in una serie di mini-episodi in ordine cronologico che raccontano, in prima persona, la tormentata ed eccentrica personalità del pittore murale, il suo impegno politico, la sua vicinanza al mondo operaio e le sue principali storie d’amore, inclusa ovviamente quella con Frida. Questa struttura del libro, se da un lato aiuta a farsi un’idea chiara della vita, del pensiero e dell’evoluzione di Rivera, dall’altro rende la lettura poco scorrevole e la riduce ad una mera raccolta di episodi descritti, a mio modo di vedere, in maniera un po’ troppo asettica impendendo così al lettore di entrare completamente nel personaggio.

[Moop · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Diego, what a very creative artist however other things in his life were pretty much a mess! He definitely had a very interesting life. His true love was his art as other parts of his life were pretty messed up. He was very politically opinionated and this got him into trouble on several occasions. His personal life with all his wives was a mess. It seemed his male organ ruled him. Interestingly enough he got penis cancer. Enjoyed learning about him and I love his work!

[Krystl Louwagie · Rating 3 out of 5]

2009 review:

Well, Diego Rivera lied to himself a lot is what I learned from this book. There's a lot in this book that is completely false, uncheckable, or that's exaggerated. It could be interesting as a study of how a man presents himself to appear as the perfect revolutionary/communist Mexican male artist. It was a fairly easy read, especially as books for class go. But I wouldn't go so far as to say I'd recommend it outside of class...:p

[Melissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rivera tells some pretty fantastic tales in this book... some a bit too fantastic to believe. It's unfortunate, but it makes it harder to read the rest. Despite this, it's totally worth reading for Rivera's descriptions of painting certain murals -- what he was thinking and trying to convey, the context of the times. Also, Frida Kahlo's write-up on him is beautiful.

[Rena · Rating 4 out of 5]

A vivid introduction to Diego's life as an artist and the politics that inspired his art. A man of the world who rubbed elbows with many a famous people (no spoilers). Frida fans will get a glimpse of Diego's view of her as an artist and as his wife. While the chapters are short, the book provides a seamless, chronological timeline of his professional and personal life. In short, a good read.

[JoeM · Rating 5 out of 5]

He is my favorite artist. His own view of his work and his life was just as I expected and more. Great insight into his life...not without a touch of ego. A good read if interested in the life of the muralist/activist.

[L'Artiste · Rating 4 out of 5]

No matter what you think of Rivera as a person, this was a really interesting read. His life was full of drama, he was so narcissistic, but at the end he owns up to his faults, and doesn't apologize for them.

[Elena · Rating 3 out of 5]

genial, como toda esa generacion

[Mya Dosch · Rating 4 out of 5]

All of Rivera's fabrications and tall tales make for a quick-moving autobiography, if not totally trustworthy.

[Karin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Slow start, but really enjoyed especially after reading "Frida".

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

May not have a mass appeal but if you like lives of artists--this one's for you. He was such a colorful character, and courageous artist.

[Tessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a crazy life to lead! Well worth the read.