← Back to the gallery
Artwork · 1935 · Genre painting

The Flower Carrier

Diego Rivera
1935 · Oil and tempera on Masonite
San Francisco MOMA, San Francisco
★ 6.9 editorial score

A laborer crouches on hands and knees, buckling under an enormous basket of flowers strapped to his back, while a woman steadies the load - the dazzling blossoms set against the crushing weight of the work that carries them. Diego Rivera reduces the scene to bold, rounded forms and earthy color, turning a humble porter into a monumental emblem of toil. Now in San Francisco, the Flower Carrier is among his most beloved easel paintings - the beauty of the flowers and the burden of the poor man who bears them held in poignant, deliberate tension.

Related works

Other works that share a movement, a subject, or an artist with this one.

Other media

Works in other forms that share a subject with this one.

Other media onSubject·Flowers
Quote · 1893

“There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion. It can be built up as an exact science by the reasoner. Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers. All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance. But this rose is an extra. Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it. It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers.”

Arthur Conan Doyle