(SIGNED BY DIEGO RIVERA) THE FRESCOES BY DIEGO RIVERA FROM CUERNAVACA

Rivera, Diego (Text by Emily Edwards and photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo)

Published by Editoria "Cultura", Mexico, 1932

7 3/4 in. x 5 in. Card covers, creased, edge-worn or edge-torn. Printed on cheap, brittle paper, now browned. Paper to spine split, folded over and/or chipped. Text block detached from covers, awaiting professional reattachment. Black and white photographs of Diego Rivera's Frescoes at The Palace of Cortes in Cuernavaca, Mexico. SIGNED by Diego Rivera on first blank page. The mural, entitled HISTORY OF MORELOS - CONQUEST AND REVOLUTION was commissioned by Dwight Morrow, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico at the time. The book contains photographs from the early career of renowned Mexican photographer Manuel Alvarez Bravo when he was doing freelance commercial work. His interest in Rivera's work had everything to do with his own then-largely-unrealized expression of the deeper Mexican experience - historical, cultural, spiritual. One eight-panel fold-out, black and white photograph of the mural. Also included, perhaps necessary to get the booklet published in the first place, are sections for example, entitled "What a Tourist Should Know of Cuernavaca", as well as tourist promotional advertisements for hotels, restaurants, theatres, tour buses, telephone service, ice cream! As testimony to the diminutive size, scope and local nature of this little pamphlet, the last page contains photographer Bravo's own advertisement, with contact information, which reads, "Fotografias de la Pintura Moderna Mexicana y de la Escultura Precortesiana. You can buy photographs of modern Mexican painting and of pre-coquest sculpture from Manuel Alvarez Bravo. Av. Guatemala No. 20. - Mexico, D.F." ". During the summers of 1925 and 1926 Emily Edwards, an artist best known for her early then later art teaching work at Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, traveled with a friend to Mexico, where she met the muralist Diego Rivera, who became a life-long friend. Her studies with Rivera stimulated an interest in Mexican murals, and Edwards subsequently spent ten years in Mexico, sketching in small villages and conducting research for a book on Mexican mural painting from the pre-Columbian era to modern times. She published this small pamphlet, The Frescoes by Diego Rivera, in Cuernavaca (1932). A scarce piece of ephemera, even more scarce with signature of the artist. No copies located in the OCLC. "Probably no painting by Diego Rivera lends itself more simply and generously than the frescoes painted in the Palace of Cortes in Cuernavaca. The mural begins with the invasion of Mexico by the Spanish.Rivera chose to focus on the region of Cuernavaca, primarily because of the emblematic sufferings of the indigenous peoples of that region, their response to the Spaniard's violent invasion, and events in the wake of that initial conquest." "In the Frescoes of Cuernavaca, Diego Rivera has placed salient historical facts covering four centuries upon a broken wall space, and, as in the passing of a vision, time does not count, interruptions do not interrupt. Here is a firm grasp of facts, but having passed through the crucible of the artist's imagination the subject matter emerges as something larger than fact, indeed as an eternal comment on human destiny.In the kneeling woman about to be branded, her warm, dark flesh against a white covering, her delicate feet under her agonized body, is concentrated the terror and ignominy of all conquered peoples." No doubt enhanced by her personal friendship with Rivera, Emily Edwards was able, in this brief, 27-page pamphlet, to communicate such considerations and accomodations BEHIND the eye of the artist, as they resulted in the actual compositonal decisions. For instance, "the narrowness of the corridor (where the frescos were located) constituted a handicap which Rivera had to consider in his composition as the long section of wall must be seen from points near to it than its own height. By creating a background of landscape along the top of the entire wall, as a continuation of the landscape seen through the arches, and building d. Seller Inventory # 87622

Bibliographic Details

Title: (SIGNED BY DIEGO RIVERA) THE FRESCOES BY ...
Publisher: Editoria "Cultura", Mexico
Publication Date: 1932
Binding: Pamphlet
Illustrator: Diego Rivera and Manual Alvarez Bravo
Condition: Good
Signed: Signed by Author(s)
Edition: First Printing (NAP).