In his public murals and paintings, Diego Rivera depicted the human experience—families and workers, struggles and celebrations, histories and imagined futures. Between the early 1920s and the early 1940s, he worked in both Mexico and the United States and found inspiration in the social and cultural life of the two countries. He envisioned an America—broadly understood—that shared an Indigenous past and an industrial future, and where cooperation, rather than divisions, were paramount. Diego Rivera’s America examines this prolific time in the artist’s life through more than 130 works, including his drawings, easel paintings, frescoes, and more. The first major exhibition focused solely on the Mexican artist in over 20 years, it reveals the broad range of Rivera’s work through a series of thematic sections that bring together more works from this time period than have been seen together since the artist’s lifetime.

The exhibition featured iconic works such as Dance in Tehuantepec (1928), The Flowered Canoe (1931), Nude with Calla Lilies (1944) and other depictions of flower carriers and vendors, and three major paintings by Frida Kahlo, all done in San Francisco, including a self-portrait of her standing next to Rivera. The exhibition included rarely seen works from private collections, major paintings on loan from museums in both the United States and Mexico, studies for pivotal mural projects in Mexico City, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York, as well as large-scale digital projections that convey the immersive quality of his epic murals.

Diego Rivera’s America was co-organized by Crystal Bridges and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The exhibition was curated by James Oles, guest curator, with Maria Castro, assistant curator at SFMOMA, and coordinated at Crystal Bridges by Jen Padgett, the museum’s acting Windgate curator of craft.