Diego Maria Rivera
Nude with Necklace (Frida Kahlo)
Diego Maria Rivera
1886-1957
1930
Lithograph on Laid Paper
16 3/4 x 11 in. (42.5 x 27.9 cm)
Signed Lower Left
Ed. 98/100
A seated nude portrait of Frida Kahlo, wearing only a beaded necklace, rendered in Rivera's confident, sculptural line. Executed in 1930 — the year following the couple's marriage — the sheet was made as part of Rivera's first foray into lithography, produced at the invitation of New York dealer Carl Zigrosser of the Weyhe Gallery, who recognized the growing American appetite for Rivera's work following his rising international reputation.
This is one of relatively few graphic works from Rivera's oeuvre in which Kahlo herself is the identified subject, made in the earliest years of their marriage and predating her own emergence as an internationally recognized painter. It bridges two of the most significant strands of Rivera's career — the monumental, socially engaged figuration that defined his murals, and the private, personal register reserved for portraits of Kahlo — and captures her as Rivera's muse rather than as the icon she would later become in her own right.
Diego Rivera (1886–1957)
Diego Rivera stands as the central figure of the Mexican Muralist movement, alongside José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Trained in Mexico City and later in Europe — where he absorbed Cubism during a decade in Paris — Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 and devoted himself to a public, politically engaged art rooted in Mexican history and indigenous identity. His large-scale murals for the Secretaría de Educación Pública, the Palacio Nacional, and institutions in Detroit and San Francisco established him as one of the twentieth century's most consequential artists. Rivera's graphic work — lithographs and drawings — extended the same monumental figuration of the murals into an intimate scale, often taking as subject the women closest to him, including his wife, the painter Frida Kahlo. Rivera's work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City.
Ed. 98/100
A seated nude portrait of Frida Kahlo, wearing only a beaded necklace, rendered in Rivera's confident, sculptural line. Executed in 1930 — the year following the couple's marriage — the sheet was made as part of Rivera's first foray into lithography, produced at the invitation of New York dealer Carl Zigrosser of the Weyhe Gallery, who recognized the growing American appetite for Rivera's work following his rising international reputation.
This is one of relatively few graphic works from Rivera's oeuvre in which Kahlo herself is the identified subject, made in the earliest years of their marriage and predating her own emergence as an internationally recognized painter. It bridges two of the most significant strands of Rivera's career — the monumental, socially engaged figuration that defined his murals, and the private, personal register reserved for portraits of Kahlo — and captures her as Rivera's muse rather than as the icon she would later become in her own right.
Diego Rivera (1886–1957)
Diego Rivera stands as the central figure of the Mexican Muralist movement, alongside José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Trained in Mexico City and later in Europe — where he absorbed Cubism during a decade in Paris — Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 and devoted himself to a public, politically engaged art rooted in Mexican history and indigenous identity. His large-scale murals for the Secretaría de Educación Pública, the Palacio Nacional, and institutions in Detroit and San Francisco established him as one of the twentieth century's most consequential artists. Rivera's graphic work — lithographs and drawings — extended the same monumental figuration of the murals into an intimate scale, often taking as subject the women closest to him, including his wife, the painter Frida Kahlo. Rivera's work is held in major museum collections worldwide, including MoMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museo Dolores Olmedo in Mexico City.
Diego Maria Rivera
1933
Print
