« Back to article

Print this article

Google doodles for Mexican painter Diego Rivera

The search engine pays tribute to Diego Rivera, the greatest Mexican muralist with a doodle.

The traditional Google logo on the search engine's home page is replaced with a mural of late Mexican painter Diego Rivera today. The mural that displays a large size painting, also known as 'fresco' art is a perfect tribute to the artiste who once popularised this genre of painting murals.

Born on December 8, 1886 in Guanajuato, Diego Rivera was an influential Mexican painter who was known for his large wall works in fresco, a type of mural painting which uses plastered walls or ceilings as its canvas.

Fresco paintings were greatly popular in the Renaissance era. However, its popularity declined later, which was reclaimed with the help of Rivera who started the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art which lasted for about three decades. Rivera painted murals in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City.

Diego Rivera was a student of art in Mexico City before he moved to Spain to continue his studies. Further, he settled in Paris where he was in the company of artistes like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.

Rivera's fascination for drawing dates back to when he was three years old and he would generally draw on the walls. When his parents discovered his fascination, instead of punishing him, they installed chalkboards and canvas on the walls so that Rivera could draw on them.

As he grew up, Rivera was in the news for all the wrong reasons - one of them being that he was a womanizer and that he fathered more than one illegitimate child besides the fact that he was an atheist and did not believe in God, which was depicted in some of his paintings.

Diego Rivera remarried a Mexican painter Frida Kahlo twice -- first in 1929, to seperate in 1939. They remarried in 1940.

Rivera breathed his last on November 25, 1957. He was 70.