(b. Guanajuato, Mexico, 1886; d. Mexico City, 1957). José Diego María Rivera was part of the "Los Tres Grandes" (The Three Great Ones) of the Mexican Muralist movement together with José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. When he was a child his family moved to Mexico City where Rivera studied at the San Carlos Academy under Felix Parra, Jose Maria Velasco and Santiago Rubell. Awarded a grant by the government in 1906, he traveled to Spain where he studied with Eduardo Chicarro y Aguera and later to Paris where he met Picasso and other avant-garde painters. During this period he painted works closely related to Cézanne and Cubism. In Paris he discussed with Siqueiros the revolutionary art politics that would later form the basis of the Mexican Muralist movement. In 1920 he visited Italy and was inspired by the murals of the great masters of the Renaissance. Back in Mexico and sponsored by José Vasconcelos, the Secretary of Education, R
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