Memories of My Father and His Art / Recuerdos de mi padre y su arte
Q&A with Guadalupe Rivera Marín
“This is the first children’s picture book that I have written about my father and my experiences with him as I was growing up,” states author Guadalupe Rivera Marín as she responds to how this book is different from other books written about her father and Frida Kahlo.
In her book she shares childhood memories of the world-renowned artist who is her father, Diego Rivera. Rivera Marín showcases a series of her father’s paintings that hold a special place in her memory. Her recollections are tender, humorous, and unexpected.
Picos con naranja / 1925
Rivera, Diego (1866-1957)
Encaustic on canvas, 68 x 56 cm.
Guadalupe Rivera Marín is the daughter of Diego Rivera and Guadalupe Marín. Her early childhood was spent in rural Mexico, while her father created government-sponsored murals for the Secretaria de Educación Pública. An accomplished author and lecturer, Dr. Rivera Marín lives in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
What inspired you to write a book for children about your memories of your father?
In our time, my father has been known as one of the greatest painters, and certainly one of the greatest muralists in the world. But many people don’t know about my father as a human being, and through this book I wanted to let people know that my father really loved children, and that he paid so much attention to children in his work, Mexican children especially, because he found that they were the future of the country.
Was it difficult to select just 14 of his works of art to include in the book, and how did you make those selections?
Once we decided that the book would feature my father’s images that contained children and scenes of childhood, it was easy. I chose different images—some about the Mexican family, some about the children, and some about myself. I sent the publisher more images than we could fit into the book, which is only 32 pages, and they decided on the final list of images.
Did you like to read as a child?
When I first started school I didn’t like to read very much, and I wasn’t a very good student. But as I got older, I discovered that I loved to read. I loved to read anything and everything: stories, novels, books about history and art. Reading so much inspired me to become a writer myself.
You are the subject of several of the paintings included in the book—are recollections of posing for your father an important part of your childhood memories?
I did pose for my father, but I was so young at the time. I didn’t realize until I was older what it meant or how important my father was. I never knew my father was such a great painter. I lived with him and that’s all, he was just my father. Also, I only lived with him until I was 3 years old, when he left and went to Russia. Later, when I lived with him as a teenager, I began to understand how important he was, and I started to understand him and to be interested in how he created art.
You are currently founder and board chair of the Diego Rivera Foundation. What are the goals of the foundation?
The goal of the foundation is to prevent my father’s legacy from falling prey to blatant commercialization. We created the Foundation to promote my father’s work and to protect his reputation, and to ensure that his work is reproduced and used in a respectful and dignified way. It’s a way of honoring my father, which by extension is to honor México, because my father devoted his life to sharing the beauty and culture of his country with the rest of the world.
[This article has been
edited for www.latinastyle.com. For the full version,
check out the September/October issue of LATINA Style.]
