Abstract

ZUMOFF, Jacob A.. Between a Rockefeller and a Hard Place: Diego Rivera’s Man at the Crossroads and the Left in the 1930s. An. Inst. Investig. Estét [online]. 2022, vol.44, n.121, pp.219-262.  Epub July 31, 2023. ISSN 0185-1276.  https://doi.org/10.22201/iie.18703062e.2022.121.2803.

In 1933, Diego Rivera began painting Man at the Crossroads, a mural at Rockefeller Center in New York City. After Rivera included a portrait of Bolshevik Revolutionary Vladimir Lenin, and refused Nelson Rockerfeller’s demand to remove this, the mural was first covered up, and then in February 1934, destroyed. That same year, Rivera painted a refashioned mural, Hombre, el controlador del universo, at the Palacio de Belles Artes in Mexico City. The current article examines this controversy through the lens of Rivera’s relationship with the Communist left, in particular the pro-Moscow Communist Party, the Trotskyist Communist League of America, and the Lovestoneite Communist Party (Opposition), and argues that this provides a fuller understanding of Rivera’s evolving political commitments and the changing politics of his paintings in this period.

Keywords : Diego Rivera; Rockefeller Center; Communist Party USA; Trotskyism; Lovestoneites.