Self-Portrait (Rivera)

The young Diego Rivera, years before his fame as Mexico's great muralist, portrays himself with sober directness during his student years in Europe, the handling still indebted to academic and Spanish traditions. Now in the Museo Dolores Olmedo near Mexico City, this early self-portrait shows the future master of monumental public art in formation - before the frescoes of revolution and labor, before Paris Cubism and the rediscovery of Mexico's own heritage, a serious young painter studying the European tradition he would later transform into a bold, politically charged art of his own.