An artist’s journey to find their voice can be a long, strange trip, indeed.
Diego Rivera is one of the most accomplished Mexican muralists of the early twentieth century. However, this painting, Dos Mujeres (Two Women), is a unique example of Rivera’s Cubist period in Paris.
In his early twenties, a government grant enabled Rivera to travel and study in Europe. Arriving in Madrid before moving to Paris, his earliest European influences were the Post-Impressionist Paul Cezanne, and the burgeoning Cubist movement led by Pablo Picasso.
Cubists refuted the idea that painting should mimic nature, and so they rejected traditional techniques like perspective and modeling.
Unbound by linear perspective, Cubism depicts radically fragmented objects from multiple perspectives while highlighting the canvas’s two-dimensional nature.
Not only is Dos Mujeres one of Rivera’s largest and most ambitious Cubist works, it is also one of the most obvious depictions of his own life.
Framed against the Paris skyline, the painting shows Rivera’s first wife and fellow artist, Angelina Beloff, standing as she speaks with Alma Delores Bastian, an artist who occupied another studio in the same building as the couple.
Dos Mujeres’ lighter color palette signals the coming shift in Rivera’s work that would define his rise to prominence.
Other works from this period featured nationalist objects like sombreros and ponchos that would bring Rivera back to Mexico.
The artist had already begun to move away from abstraction when he was profoundly impacted by the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution of 1917.
During a trip through Italy in 1920, Rivera discovered large Renaissance wall frescoes, which would provide the perfect medium to address socially important subjects for a wide range of viewers.
He returned to Mexico in 1921, shifting his focus to large-scale murals depicting everyday workers, politics, and Mexican history that would come to define his career.
