Man at crossroads

Mei and Emilia

Man at crossroads

• Born in 8th of december of 1886.
• Cubism, realism and muralism.

• Married Frida Kahlo in 1940. She died in 1954.
• Died in the 24th of november, in 1957 (70 years old).

Diego Rivera

John D. Rockefeller, a businessman of the same family, gave him the following key:"Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future", since John wanted the painting to make people pause and think.

Theme

Composition

Where is it now?

Man at the Crossroads was a fresco by Diego Rivera in the Rockefeller Center, New York. The painting was controversial because it included an image of Lenin and a Soviet Russian May Day parade. Eventually, it was broken and removed. But, determined not to have his work censored, Rivera recreated the mural in Mexico on the Palacio de Bellas Artes. The mural, retitled “Man Controller of the Universe” is still on display today.

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On the right, Lenin is seen holding hands with a multi-racial group of workers. The one on the right was a headless seated Caesar. For Rivera, these represented the replacement of superstition by scientific mastery of nature, and the overthrow of authoritarian rule by liberated workers.

Wealthy society women are seen playing cards and smoking at the left. The one on the left depicted an angry Jupiter, whose raised hand holding a thunderbolt has been struck off by a lightning strike.

In the center, a workman was depicted controlling machinery. Before him, a giant fist emerged holding an orb depicting the recombination of atoms and dividing cells in acts of chemical and biological generation. From the central figure four propeller-like shapes stretched to the corner of the composition, depicting arcs of light created by giant lenses anchoring the left and right edges of the space. The bottom part of the painting was to depict the controlled growth of natural resources, in the form of a variety of plants emerging from their roots, visible in a cut-away view under the soil. However, this section was never completed. It exists only in the later recreation of the composition in Mexico.