Diego Rivera

Sinarquistas

signed
charcoal on tan paper
18 × 24 inches (45.7 × 61.0 cm)
c. 1937

The Sinarquistas was a right wing national union formed in Guanajuato in 1937. Their stated purpose was to fight Communism and reinvigorate the Catholic Church. Rivera depicts them as masked terrorists, raiding a rural village, dragging off women and setting fire to a thatched roof cooperative farm building. The “Escuela Rural” in the background stands for the positive changes brought by the Revolution, which these vandals are destroying.

Provenance:
Private collection, Tampa, Florida

Literature:
Pete Hamill, Diego Rivera, New York, 1999, illus. p. 168