direct observations
Diego Rivera – the great Mexican painter
When the Great October Socialist Revolution took place in Russia, a revolutionary struggle was going on in Mexico for seven years. Armed peasants opposed the dictatorship of the rich and the priests, the landowners who seized fertile land, against the dominance of foreign capitalists. The war was unusually stubborn and cruel. The reactionary militia malice, American troops twice invaded Mexico. The bourgeoisie traitorously turned its weapons against the peasant detachments led by the popular leaders Francisco Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The rebels showed heroism and won great victories.
In February 1917, a constitution was adopted. Continue reading
Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Maillol – antiquity in the works
Antoine Bourdelle and Aristide Mayol. What binds them? That they were born in the same year – 1861st? That both are French? Or that they are outstanding sculptors and are at the forefront of the art of the 20th century? Yes it is. But, among other things, another, very important. They admired antiquity and became its living carriers in an era that did little to flourish sculpture.
Sculptors lived at the turn of the century. Humanity was on the verge of the First World War, the October Revolution, which shook the foundations of the old system. Closed the last page of classical art history. The first letters fit into a book called Modern Art. Continue reading
Anton Refrigier – born in Moscow
Refrege was born in Moscow in the year of the first Russian revolution. This fact would seem irrelevant to the biography of an American artist: after all, his father took him to his homeland, to France, when he was still a teenager. In Paris, the boy’s artistic inclinations, inherited from his Russian ancestors, appeared: his maternal grandfather was a famous violinist, his grandmother was a ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater, and Anton himself became interested in the sculptor’s craft. Continue reading
