Bohemia in Mexico - MY PAPA DIEGO AND ME in ARTnews

My Papa Diego and Me is featured in the December issue of ARTnews! Read the review below or pick up a copy at your newsstand.

ARTnews, December 2009
Art Talk column, page 34

Bohemia in Mexico
by Gail Gregg

Once upon a time a little girl in Mexico, nicknamed Pico by her father, grew up in a bohemian world that few children of the early 20th century could have imagined. After their parents divoced, Pico and her younger sister lived first with their mother and stepfather, then with their father and stepmother, then with all four adults in the same compound. Revolutionaries all, her parents and stepparents hosted activists, writers, and artist in their flower-bedeched home.

Pico ("Little One" in Spanish) is the daughter of Diego Rivera and Guadalupe Marín--and stepdaughter of Frida Kahlo and poet-chemist Jorge Cuesta. Now 85, Pico (Guadalupe Rivera Marín) has written a children's book that evokes both the particular nature of her upbringing and the universal experience of childhood.

My Papa Diego and Me, recently out from Children's Book Press, is a kind of collaboration with Rivera himself, whose paintings serve as illustrations. Profits from the book support the Diego Rivera Foundation, which the author heads. Published as a parallel text in English and Spanish, My Papa Diego and Me is Rivera Marín's sixth book about her father and her first children's book. A retired law professor living in Cuernavaca, Mexico, Rivera Marín has written several law books as well.

Rivera, who died in 1957, is best known for his murals and his fiery relationship with Kahlo. But Rivera Marín wants people to understand how much attention her father paid to children in his work--Mexican children especially. Describing A Poor Family in the Street (1934), Rivera Marín recalls how, after a mother and her children arrived in Rivera's home on Mixcalco Street in Mexico City, he took them in and painted their portrait, and gave the painting to the mother to help finance a new life in the city.

Rivera Marín also remembers the tedium of posing for her father at a young age. Once, to keep her occupied, Rivera gave her an orange--the work became Pico with an Orange (1925). "He got really annoyed with me," she confesses, "because I ate the orange before he finished the painting!"

Submitted by Childrens Book Press on Friday, December 4, 2009 12:50pm