Arena

Season 1 Episode 317: Revolutionary with a Paintbox

The Arena season opens with a profile of Diego Rivera , considered to be the most famous painter in the history of Latin America, and also the most notorious. He was a Rabelaisian figure of far-flung proportions, who claimed to have been a confidant of Lenin, the true father of Rommel, and to have tasted human flesh on a number of occasions. He was a maverick, a compendium of contradictions and irrationalities. A self-proclaimed revolutionary, who sought in mural paintings a new public art form to broadcast social change to the people of Mexico, he was also the man who accepted commissions from the yankee-dollar capitalists, Rockefeller and Ford. This portrait compiles testimony from Mexico's leading novelist, Carlos Fuentes ; ex-model and lover, Dolores Olmedo ; and Jose Luis Cuevas , one of the most successful of Mexico's contemporary painters. There is also extraordinary archive footage of Zapata, Trotsky and Rivera himself and, of course, the epic murals, filmed on location.

Genre:

Documentary

Seasons:

1

Episodes:

692

Cast:

Quality:

HD

Duration:

90 min

First Air:

1975

Rating:

7.2