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Diego Rivera painted walls the size of buildings. He turned plaster and pigment into political statements that entire nations argued about. His murals got destroyed, censored, and protested, and people still lined up to see them.
Among Diego Rivera famous paintings, you’ll find everything from 27-panel fresco cycles inside Detroit’s finest museum to a quiet oil painting of a man crushed under a basket of flowers. Rivera worked across Mexican muralism, social realism, and even cubism during his years in Paris alongside Pablo Picasso.
This article breaks down his 10 most significant works. What they depict, why they caused controversy, and where you can actually see them today. Each painting tells a piece of Mexico’s story through the eyes of an artist who believed art belonged to everyone, not just the people who could afford to hang it on their walls.
Diego Rivera Famous Paintings
The Flower Carrier (1935)
Overview
Painted in 1935, The Flower Carrier (also called El Cargador de Flores) is probably the most recognized easel painting by Diego Rivera. It hangs at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), donated by Albert M. Bender.
The piece measures 121.9 x 121.3 cm. Nearly square. Rivera used oil painting mixed with tempera on masonite to complete it.
Subject and Symbolism
A peasant man kneels on the ground, crushed under an oversized basket of purple and pink flowers strapped to his back. A woman stands behind him, helping him bear the weight.
The flowers look beautiful to the viewer. But the man carrying them never sees that beauty. He only knows the burden.
That contrast is the whole point. Rivera was obsessed with the dignity of Mexico’s working class, the campesinos and flower vendors who made their living selling goods at market. The oversized basket is deliberately exaggerated to stress how much physical labor goes into producing something pretty for the wealthy.
Artistic Technique
Rivera rubbed the paint directly into the masonite surface. The colors are bold and saturated, almost glowing. Thick black contour lines outline both figures, giving them a strong graphic quality.
The background is dark and earthy. The flowers burst with bright pinks and purples against it. That clash between dark and light makes the composition feel alive. The man’s white clothing is almost impossibly clean for a manual laborer, a small bit of artistic license on Rivera’s part.
Some art historians have noted the influence of Vincent van Gogh in the color intensity here. Rivera admired van Gogh’s work, and it shows.
Historical Context
Rivera finished The Flower Carrier while wrapping up work on his massive mural series The History of Mexico at the National Palace in Mexico City. 1935 was a busy year. He was juggling multiple projects.
By this point, Rivera had already become a major figure in the Mexican muralism movement. But this smaller painting proved he could be just as effective on a compact scale. His political beliefs, rooted in Marxism and solidarity with Mexico’s indigenous people, run through this work like a current.
Why It Matters
The Flower Carrier is Rivera’s most reproduced painting. You’ll find it on posters, prints, and textbook covers worldwide.
It captures everything Rivera cared about in a single image: the beauty and suffering of working people, the gap between those who labor and those who enjoy the results. You can see it in person at SFMOMA in San Francisco, on Floor 2.
Detroit Industry Murals (1932-1933)
Overview
The Detroit Industry Murals are a series of 27 fresco panels that cover all four walls of the Rivera Court at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Diego Rivera painted them between 1932 and 1933, funded by a commission from Edsel Ford.
Rivera considered this his most successful work. In 2014, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated them a National Historic Landmark.
Subject and Symbolism
The murals depict Detroit’s manufacturing base and labor force, with a heavy focus on the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant and the production of the 1932 Ford V-8 engine.
But this isn’t just about cars. Rivera layered in references to science, agriculture, medicine, and even Aztec mythology. He painted gigantic figures representing the four races alongside raw materials (iron ore, coal, sand, limestone) that form the foundation of industry.
The east wall shows birth and new beginnings. The west wall depicts endings, with military bombers and technology’s destructive potential. Rivera was making a point about duality: industry creates and destroys in equal measure.
Artistic Technique
Rivera used the traditional buon fresco technique, painting directly onto wet plaster so the pigment fuses permanently with the wall. Same method used in Renaissance murals.
He drew on his background in cubism to show multiple angles at once, capturing the chaotic energy of the factory floor. The color palette is deliberately accessible: bright, readable from a distance, designed for a broad public audience.
Rivera and his assistants worked 15-hour days for eight months straight. He reportedly lost 100 pounds during the project. His use of scale here is extraordinary, with human figures dwarfed by machinery to show the relationship between workers and the industrial systems they operate.
Historical Context
Rivera arrived in Detroit during the Great Depression. The city was struggling hard. Factories had shut down. Workers stood in breadlines.
Days before Rivera’s arrival, an infamous Hunger March ended with Ford security guards shooting into a crowd of unemployed workers, killing six people. That tension between capital and labor runs through every panel.
When the murals were finished, Catholic and Episcopalian clergy condemned them as blasphemous. The Detroit News called them “vulgar” and “un-American.” The City Council even considered whitewashing the walls. Instead, 10,000 people showed up to see them on a single Sunday.
Why It Matters
The Detroit Industry Murals are widely considered the finest example of Mexican mural art in the United States. They directly influenced New Deal mural programs of the 1930s and 1940s.
Rivera showed a racially integrated workforce at a time when Ford’s actual factory was deeply segregated. He painted the world as he wanted it to be. You can visit them at the Detroit Institute of Arts in the Rivera Court.
Man at the Crossroads (1934)
Overview
Man at the Crossroads is one of the most infamous artworks of the 20th century. Commissioned in 1933 for the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York, the original was destroyed in 1934 after a political controversy.
Rivera recreated it later that year at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City under the new title Man, Controller of the Universe. That version survives today, measuring 4.8 x 11.45 meters.
Subject and Symbolism
A worker stands at the center, controlling an enormous machine at the crossroads of two opposing ideologies: capitalism and socialism.
To the worker’s right, wealthy society women play cards and smoke while soldiers wear gas masks above them. To his left, Vladimir Lenin holds hands with a multi-racial group of workers beneath red flags at a Soviet May Day rally.
Giant lenses stretch from the center to the edges, revealing cosmic and biological forces (exploding suns, dividing cells) discovered through telescopes and microscopes. Science sits at the heart of human progress in Rivera’s vision.
Artistic Technique
Rivera painted this as a true fresco, directly onto wet plaster. The original was approximately 63 by 17 feet, a massive undertaking for an indoor lobby space.
The balance of the composition is almost perfectly symmetrical. If you fold the scene down the middle, the spaces and objects on each side align. Rivera used this structural order to encourage direct comparison between the capitalist and socialist sides.
The surviving Mexico City version is slightly smaller but nearly identical in composition, with a few pointed additions. Rivera included a portrait of John D. Rockefeller Jr. in a nightclub scene, alongside a petri dish of syphilis bacteria hovering above. Not subtle.
Historical Context
Nelson Rockefeller’s mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, was a fan of Rivera’s work. She suggested him for the commission. The family knew about his communist politics and hired him anyway.
Things fell apart when the New York World-Telegram ran a headline accusing Rivera of painting communist propaganda on the Rockefellers’ dime. Rivera had added Lenin to the mural, which wasn’t in the original approved sketches. Nelson Rockefeller asked him to remove it. Rivera refused and offered to add Abraham Lincoln for balance. The offer was rejected.
Rivera was paid his full $21,000 fee and dismissed. The fresco was covered up for nine months, then workers chiseled it off the wall with steel tools in February 1934. Rivera’s assistant Lucienne Bloch had secretly photographed the unfinished work. Those black-and-white photos became the reference for the recreation.
Why It Matters
The destruction of Man at the Crossroads became a defining moment in the debate about artistic freedom versus patron control. It showed what happens when a Marxist artist and a capitalist family collide on a very large, very public wall.
The surviving version at the Palacio de Bellas Artes remains one of Rivera’s most visited works. It’s also one of the best examples of how social realism functioned as political commentary in 20th century art.
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park (1947)
Overview
This 15-meter-wide fresco was painted between 1946 and 1947 for the Hotel Del Prado’s restaurant in Mexico City. After the 1985 earthquake destroyed the hotel, the mural survived and was moved to the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, where it still hangs today.
It stands about 4.8 meters tall. One of Rivera’s last major mural projects.
Subject and Symbolism
The mural imagines a stroll through Alameda Central Park, Mexico City’s oldest public park, built on the grounds of an ancient Aztec marketplace. Over 150 figures from 400 years of Mexican history walk together in a single impossible afternoon.
Three eras of history flow left to right:
- The Conquest (featuring Hernan Cortes and Inquisition victims)
- The Porfirio Diaz dictatorship (elegantly dressed upper class, police pushing away indigenous families)
- The Mexican Revolution of 1910 (flames and violence looming at the edges)
At the center stands La Calavera Catrina, the famous skeleton figure created by printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada. She holds hands with a young Diego Rivera on one side and Posada on the other. Frida Kahlo stands behind them, one hand on the boy Rivera’s shoulder.
Artistic Technique
The fresco shows strong surrealist influence. People from completely different time periods stand side by side as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. That dreamlike quality is the whole concept.
Rivera packed the pictorial space with an overwhelming density of figures, yet the visual hierarchy remains clear. Your eye goes straight to La Catrina and young Rivera in the center, then radiates outward through the historical timeline.
The color palette shifts across the mural. Darker, more ominous tones on the left (conquest, oppression) gradually give way to brighter sections as history progresses.
Historical Context
Rivera originally included the phrase “God does not exist” in the mural, attributed to the 19th-century politician Ignacio Ramirez. Church officials were furious, and the mural went unseen for nine years until Rivera agreed to remove the inscription. He publicly stated: “I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis.”
When Rivera painted this, Frida Kahlo was seriously ill. Depicting her protectively standing behind his childhood self was his way of showing affection and acknowledging her influence on his life.
Why It Matters
This is arguably the most complete visual summary of Mexican history ever painted. Rivera guaranteed that stories normally edited out of official histories (indigenous people, the working class, the oppressed) had a place in the narrative.
The mural survived an earthquake that destroyed the building around it. That alone feels symbolic. Visit it at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera, right next to Alameda Central Park in Mexico City.
The History of Mexico (1929-1935)
Overview
Rivera’s mural series The History of Mexico covers three walls of the grand stairwell in the National Palace in Mexico City. He worked on it from 1929 to 1935, and it spans nearly 1,200 square feet of wall space.
Art historian Stanton Catlin compared its significance to Michelangelo’s ceiling frescoes in the Sistine Chapel. That comparison is bold, but it gives you a sense of the ambition here.
Subject and Symbolism
The three walls tell Mexico’s story chronologically:
- North wall (1929): “The Aztec World” shows pre-Columbian life, agriculture, art, trade, and Aztec warfare
- West wall (1929-1930): “From the Conquest to 1930” covers the Spanish Conquest, independence, the Mexican-American War, and the Revolution of 1910
- South wall (1935): “Mexico Today and Tomorrow” depicts modern class conflict, Karl Marx pointing toward an idealized future, and workers fighting for their rights
A large eagle with a serpent in its mouth dominates the west wall’s center. That symbol belongs to both Aztec mythology and modern Mexico. Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa appear with their revolutionary armies above it, carrying a banner reading “Tierra y Libertad” (Land and Liberty).
Artistic Technique
Rivera painted these in traditional buon fresco, the same technique he studied during a 1920 trip to Italy where he examined Renaissance frescoes firsthand.
He had to design his compositions around the pre-existing architecture, including arches and doorways. The result is a dense, layered approach where figures overlap and crowd together in ways that feel both chaotic and carefully structured.
Rivera highlighted class struggle through visual emphasis. Rich colonizers and dictators appear alongside scenes of exploitation, while indigenous workers and revolutionaries occupy positions of moral authority. The movement across the wall pulls your eye through centuries of conflict.
Historical Context
The National Palace sits on top of the ruins of the Aztec emperor Moctezuma II’s residence, which was destroyed after the Spanish Conquest in 1521. Painting Mexico’s history in this specific location was a political statement all by itself.
Rivera was part of a government-sponsored mural program started by Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s Minister of Public Education. The muralists (Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known as Los Tres Grandes) believed easel painting was “aristocratic.” Murals could speak directly to the people in public spaces.
Why It Matters
This is the definitive visual account of Mexican history on a public wall. Rivera used a Marxist framework to tell the story, foregrounding class conflict and the resilience of indigenous cultures across every era.
The National Palace is open to visitors. The murals are in the main stairwell, and seeing them in person is overwhelming in the best way.
Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931)
Overview
Agrarian Leader Zapata is a portable fresco that Rivera created for his solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York in 1931. It measures 238.1 x 188 cm and is built on reinforced cement in a galvanized-steel framework.
It still hangs at MoMA today, purchased through the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Fund.
Subject and Symbolism
Emiliano Zapata, the revolutionary leader who fought for land reform during the Mexican Revolution, stands in the foreground holding a white horse’s bridle in one hand and a sugarcane machete in the other.
A dead hacienda owner lies at his feet. Behind Zapata, a group of peasant rebels carry farming tools as weapons: sickles, bows, and hoe-like implements used for harvesting agave.
Rivera deliberately dressed Zapata as a humble campesino in white cotton and sandals. In real life, Zapata presented himself as a charro (cowboy) in elaborate clothing. Rivera stripped away the status symbols to portray him as a folk hero of the people.
Artistic Technique
This is a fresco on a portable steel frame, an unusual approach. Rivera created eight of these portable frescoes for the MoMA show because his wall murals couldn’t be transported. MoMA gave him a studio and six weeks to finish them.
The value contrast is striking. Zapata’s white clothing and the white horse pop against the dark earth tones behind them, immediately drawing the viewer’s eye. Rivera left the fresco’s raw white plaster exposed in places to create this effect.
The composition references Paolo Uccello’s 15th-century painting The Battle of San Romano, which Rivera studied during his time in Italy. The white horse shares the same imposing presence.
Historical Context
Rivera’s MoMA exhibition in 1931 was only the museum’s second solo show for a living artist (the first was Henri Matisse). Over 50,000 people attended, breaking attendance records.
The painting is based on a panel from Rivera’s earlier mural cycle at the Palace of Cortes in Cuernavaca. He adapted it specifically for an American audience, knowing that Zapata’s story of peasant revolution would resonate (and provoke) in Depression-era New York.
Why It Matters
Agrarian Leader Zapata turned a Mexican revolutionary into an international icon. Rivera later produced a lithograph based on this image that became one of the most significant prints of 20th century art.
See it at MoMA in New York City.
Creation (1922-1923)
Overview
Creation was Rivera’s first commissioned mural in Mexico. He painted it on a wall in the Simon Bolivar Amphitheater at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, covering over 1,000 square feet.
It marked Rivera’s return to Mexico after more than a decade in Europe.
Subject and Symbolism
The mural depicts a heavenly host with Renaissance-style haloes. Figures represent different human virtues and creative forces: knowledge, strength, tradition, and artistic expression.
Compared to his later political murals, Creation leans more toward classical allegory. It’s a transitional work. Rivera was still finding his voice as a muralist, moving away from the European painting styles he’d absorbed in Paris and Madrid.
Artistic Technique
Rivera used encaustic (wax-based paint) combined with gold leaf for some sections. The style is heavily influenced by Italian Renaissance fresco traditions he studied during his 1920-1921 trip to Italy.
He later admitted he wasn’t happy with it. He felt the painting was “too Italian in technique” and didn’t reflect the Mexican identity he wanted to express. That self-criticism pushed him toward the social realism that would define his career.
Historical Context
Jose Vasconcelos, Mexico’s Minister of Public Education, commissioned this piece as part of a broader government effort to use public art for national identity building after the Mexican Revolution.
Rivera joined the Mexican Communist Party the same year he started this mural. He also founded the Revolutionary Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors. His political awakening and his artistic direction were happening at the same time.
Why It Matters
Creation was the starting point. Without it, the Detroit murals and the National Palace frescoes never happen. It’s where Rivera learned what he wanted to do, and more importantly, what he didn’t want to do.
It remains at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City.
Pan American Unity (1940)
Overview
Pan American Unity is a five-panel fresco mural that Rivera painted in 1940 for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. It measures approximately 22 feet high and 74 feet wide.
After decades at San Francisco City College, the mural was moved in 2021 to SFMOMA, where it’s now on permanent display.
Subject and Symbolism
The mural explores the merging of artistic traditions from North and South America. Rivera placed pre-Columbian art and culture alongside modern American industry and technology.
The five panels move from ancient Mesoamerican sculpture and architecture through the meeting of indigenous and European traditions, to modern mechanical production and creative expression. Figures include Aztec deities, Mexican folk artists, and American inventors.
Rivera painted it during World War II, and the threat of fascism hangs over parts of the composition. A dictator figure appears alongside war machinery, balanced against scenes of peaceful creative collaboration.
Artistic Technique
This is true fresco on steel-reinforced panels. Rivera worked on it live at the Exposition, so visitors could actually watch him paint. Took him about five months.
The mural blends several painting mediums and stylistic approaches within a single work. Some sections feel almost like cubist compositions, while others lean toward the social realism he was known for. The rhythm of the panels carries you from past to present and back again.
Historical Context
Rivera painted this during a complicated period in his personal life. He and Frida Kahlo had divorced in 1939 and would remarry later in 1940. His political situation was tense too. He’d been expelled from the Communist Party years earlier for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons.
The mural was a public performance as much as an artwork. Thousands of fairgoers watched Rivera work, making it one of the most visible acts of mural creation in American history.
Why It Matters
Pan American Unity is the only Rivera mural that can be seen at a major American museum today in a purpose-built gallery setting. Its move to SFMOMA in 2021 made it accessible to a massive new audience.
Nude with Calla Lilies (1944)
Overview
Nude with Calla Lilies (also called Desnudo con Alcatraces) was painted in 1944. It’s one of Rivera’s most recognizable non-mural works, celebrating the connection between the human body and nature.
Subject and Symbolism
A nude female figure kneels with her back to the viewer, cradling an enormous bouquet of white calla lilies. The flowers almost swallow her.
Calla lilies were one of Rivera’s favorite motifs. In Mexican culture, they carry associations with sensuality and purity at the same time. The woman’s humble posture paired with the overwhelming beauty of the flowers echoes the same themes Rivera explored in The Flower Carrier: the relationship between people and the natural goods they produce.
Artistic Technique
This is an oil painting on canvas, smaller and more intimate than Rivera’s mural work. The forms are rounded and simplified, characteristic of Rivera’s mature style.
The warm tones of the woman’s skin contrast against the cool whites and greens of the lilies. Rivera’s line work here is smooth and flowing, without the hard graphic edges he used in some of his political murals.
Historical Context
By 1944, Rivera was deep into a period of painting easel works alongside his mural commissions. These smaller pieces often sold well and helped fund his larger projects.
The painting reflects Rivera’s lifelong interest in indigenous Mexican people and their daily lives. Flower vendors, carriers, and sellers appear throughout his body of work as recurring subjects.
Why It Matters
Nude with Calla Lilies shows a quieter side of Rivera. No political slogans. No class warfare. Just a figure, flowers, and the kind of soft beauty that Rivera could produce when he set aside his public persona.
The Flower Seller (1942)
Overview
The Flower Seller is a 1942 painting that continues Rivera’s lifelong theme of depicting Mexico’s flower vendors. It shares DNA with The Flower Carrier but takes a different emotional angle.
Subject and Symbolism
A young girl kneels beside a large arrangement of white lilies. The flowers dominate the space, almost dwarfing her small frame.
Where The Flower Carrier focused on burden and struggle, The Flower Seller leans more into beauty and quiet dignity. The girl isn’t laboring under the weight. She’s presenting them. But the class dynamics are still there. She’s a seller, not a buyer.
Artistic Technique
Rivera used soft, muted tones and gentle brushwork. The composition places the flowers as the focal point, with the girl slightly off-center. The arrangement of whites, greens, and the girl’s darker clothing creates a natural harmony across the canvas.
Why It Matters
Rivera’s flower paintings are among his most commercially popular works. They show his ability to create images that are both politically meaningful and visually accessible to a broad audience.
The Watermelons (1957)
Overview
The Watermelons was Rivera’s final painting, completed in 1957, the year he died of heart failure at age 70.
Subject and Symbolism
The painting shows sliced watermelons arranged in a still life composition. Bright reds, greens, and pinks fill the canvas.
There’s a poignant coincidence here. Frida Kahlo’s last painting, Viva la Vida, also featured watermelons. She had died in 1954, three years before Rivera. Whether Rivera intended this as a tribute to his wife is debated, but the parallel is hard to ignore.
In Mexican culture, watermelons carry associations with celebration and life. Choosing this subject for his last work feels like a farewell that’s both personal and cultural.
Artistic Technique
The painting is direct and uncluttered. Bold primary colors dominate, especially reds and greens. The brushwork is confident but shows signs of the physical toll on Rivera, who had suffered a stroke.
Compared to his earlier still life paintings, The Watermelons is simpler. Fewer objects. Less layering. Like Rivera was distilling everything down to its core.
Why It Matters
It’s the final statement from one of the 20th century’s most important artists. The fact that it echoes Kahlo’s last painting turns two separate artworks into an unintentional conversation between two people whose lives and art were permanently tangled together.
FAQ on Diego Rivera Famous Paintings
What is Diego Rivera’s most famous painting?
The Flower Carrier (1935) is widely considered his most famous easel painting. It shows a peasant struggling under a basket of flowers, painted in oil and tempera on masonite. It hangs at SFMOMA in San Francisco.
Where can you see Diego Rivera’s murals in person?
His major murals are at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Palace in Mexico City, the Palacio de Bellas Artes, and SFMOMA. The Museo Mural Diego Rivera in Mexico City houses Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park.
Why was the Rockefeller Center mural destroyed?
Rivera added a portrait of Vladimir Lenin to Man at the Crossroads without approval. Nelson Rockefeller asked him to remove it. Rivera refused. The fresco was chiseled off the wall in February 1934. He recreated it in Mexico City.
What painting technique did Diego Rivera use?
Rivera primarily used the fresco technique, painting directly onto wet plaster so pigment fuses with the wall permanently. For easel works, he used oil paint and tempera on masonite or canvas. He studied fresco methods in Italy.
Was Diego Rivera married to Frida Kahlo?
Yes. Rivera and Frida Kahlo married in 1929, divorced in 1939, then remarried in 1940. Their relationship was turbulent but deeply influential on both artists’ work. Kahlo appears in several of Rivera’s most significant murals.
What art movement did Diego Rivera belong to?
Rivera was a founder of the Mexican muralism movement alongside Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Earlier in his career, he practiced cubism in Paris. His mature work is classified as social realism.
How many murals did Diego Rivera paint?
Rivera created over 100 murals throughout his career, spanning Mexico and the United States. His largest projects include the National Palace murals (1929-1935), the Detroit Industry Murals (1932-1933), and the Secretariat of Public Education frescoes.
What themes did Diego Rivera paint about?
Rivera focused on the Mexican working class, indigenous culture, political revolution, and class struggle. His murals depict the history of Mexico, industrial labor, and the tension between capitalism and socialism. Flower vendors appear frequently.
How much are Diego Rivera paintings worth?
Rivera’s work commands high prices at auction. Los Rivales sold for nearly $10 million at Christie’s in 2018, making it one of the most expensive paintings by a Latin American artist. Smaller works sell for hundreds of thousands.
What is the difference between Rivera’s murals and easel paintings?
His murals are large-scale frescoes on public walls, meant for mass audiences. His easel paintings are smaller, portable works on canvas or masonite. Both share the same subjects, but the murals carry a stronger political message through their public placement.
Conclusion
These Diego Rivera famous paintings tell the story of a man who refused to separate art from politics. Every fresco, every canvas, every portable mural carried a message about who holds power and who does the work.
Rivera shaped 20th century Latin American art in ways that still ripple through galleries and public spaces today. His fresco technique connected him to Renaissance masters. His subject matter connected him to the streets of Mexico City and the factory floors of Detroit.
From the Palacio de Bellas Artes to MoMA in New York, his work remains accessible to the public. That was always the point.
Whether you’re drawn to the political weight of the Detroit Industry Murals or the quiet dignity of a flower vendor on her knees, Rivera’s paintings reward close looking. They were made for you to see them.
