Single surviving daughter of Diego Rivera, Guadalupe Rivera Marin
speaks on the four books she has written about her father.
Esteban Cortez / The Collegian

The university’s new Center for Creativity and the Arts hosted “An Evening with Guadalupe Rivera Marin,” the daughter of 20th-century iconic Mexican muralist and painter, Diego Rivera on Feb. 8.

Marin is the only surviving daughter of Diego Rivera. She has had a long and distinguished career in the social and political life of Mexico as a lawyer, ambassador, legislator and mayor before turning her formidable energies to writing about her father in the late 80s.

Rivera Marin has written four books about her father, including her latest title “My Papa Diego and Me.”

The Collegian had the opportunity to interview Marin on campus at the Smittcamp Alumni House while she was in town.

Are you happy to be here?

Oh yes, very happy.­ I’m going to give a big talk, to talk something about my father’s history and in general about my father’s paintings in New York, especially because with the great monographs that are happening with the exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art.

I am going to sign and present “My Papa Diego and Me.” This is a small book that I wrote three years ago in San Francisco and it was published by the publishing house of a friend of mine who asked me to write a book for children. It is several histories that were related to paintings of children painted by my father.

And you are in one of them aren’t you? Didn’t he use you as a model?

I was a model in one mural in Chapingo Chapel. That is where there is the Cultural School of Mexico. I symbolized a small angel; I symbolized air.

And have you written other books about Diego?

Yes, I have written four books about my father. In ’86, 100 years after my father was born, the centenary of his birth, I realized that I didn’t know anything about my father, so I started to read and write about my father.

Now, I am thinking about writing something about my father’s works in New York because he went to New York in 1930 to prepare the exhibition of 1931 and he designed a scenario for a ballet that nobody knows. The name of the ballet is Horsepower (HP) and it symbolized the encounter between the industrialization of North America and the sensuality of Latin America.

Did this ballet have a premiere ever?

My father became really friendly with Abby Rockefeller, the wife of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and Mrs. Rockefeller had the idea to support the ballet. The music was done by Carlos Chavez many years before. It had a premiere in March of 1931. It was in the Philadelphia Opera House. But that was the only day that it was presented.

Your father had a connection with San Francisco?

He had many connections there. He had many friends there. He want to San Francisco in 1929. It was the first time he was there because he had a friend, Thomas Pflueger. He was a very rich important man. They met in Europe and he was the one who promoted the exhibition of Treasure Island in 1940. It still exists in San Francisco City College.

There are other murals he’s done in San Francisco?

Yes, exactly. The name of the mural he did in the American Stock Exchange is The Allegory of California.

And didn’t your mother pose for paintings that Diego did?

Yes, many. The main figure in the mural in the Chapingo Chapel is my mother. But the most important oil painting portrait was my mother’s portrait.­ That is a supreme work of art, “Retrato de Lupe Marin.”

You have a long career in Mexico being congresswoman, lawyer and ambassador.­

Yes. I was concentrating on my political career until the year of 1982-1983. My last job of politician, I was mayor in Álvaro Obregón. I finished as mayor and then I started to write about my father.

You have a foundation? What is that?

Yes I have a foundation. The Fundación Diego Rivera. But this is a very, very small one. It’s the only with my sons. We have been working for the memory of my father.

Gracias por su entrevista­

De nada. Gracias usted.