It is well known that Diego Rivera’s mural, Man at the Crossroads (also known as Man, Controller of the Universe) has its origins in the controversy caused by the destruction of his original fresco in the lobby of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center in New York in 1933.
Rivera’s inclusion of a portrait of Vladimir Lenin in the central part of the composition did not conform to the expectations or interests of the Rockefeller dynasty. It would be naive to think that the commission received by Rivera from the Rockefeller was for purely decorative purposes, making it paradoxical that Rivera’s strong political convictions, one of the main characteristics of his work and thus one of the reasons for his international success, were to determine the destruction of the mural in New York.
I received an invitation from the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City to choose one of the existing murals inside it and to reinterpret it for a publication.
My proposal involved a reorganization of all the elements in the mural based on their typology and abstracting them from their original collective and symbolic value.
Pencil on paper, 190 x 137 cm.
Commissioned by
Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico.
With the assistance of
Oscar Garduño and Ulises Figueroa.