Rivera was among the leading North American artists of the twentieth century, best remembered for the public murals he painted throughout Mexico and the United States. He arrived at his distinctive brand of stylized naturalism after a decade in Paris (1909-1919), where he had befriended such European artists as Picasso and Duchamp and experimented with various avant-garde approaches. Pre-Columbian art of his native country, however, would present the key source for Rivera’s mature style, characterized by emphatic color, simplified forms, and a dramatic tension between flatness and three-dimensional modeling. The figure of the flower vendor formed a recurring theme in Rivera’s work, appearing both in his murals and in easel paintings like this one. The Indian girl, kneeling before her pile of calla lilies—a flower associated with funerals and death—constitutes an ode at once to the beauty of Mexico’s native cultures and to the suffering of her native peoples.
Details
- Artist Name: Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1886-1957)
- Title: The Flower Vendor (Girl with Lilies)
- Date: 1941
- Medium: Oil on masonite
- Dimensions: 48 x 48 in. (121.9 x 121.9 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Mr. Cary Grant
- Accession Number: P.1980.2.3
- Copyright: © 2018 Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Norton Simon Museum.
[on loan]
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1969 to 1980
- Wright, Jessica Noelani, Come Look with Me (reprint),2008, pp.22-23
- Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California, Masterpieces from the Norton Simon Museum, p. 184
- Wright, Jessica Noelani, Come Look with Me (reprint 2022),2022, pp.2, 22-23
- South Bay Magazine,
- The J. Paul Getty Trust, The J. Paul Getty Report,
- Myers, Kim, The Christian Science Monitor,
- The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, El Arte Moderno de Mexico From Regional Collections 1910-1970,
- Wright, Jessica Noelani, Come Look with Me, pp.22-23, inside cover, and back cover
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