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DIEGO RIVERA -- MY ART, MY LIFE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY (WITH GLADYS MARCH) |
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AT THE SAN CARLOS SCHOOL OF FINE ARTS SOON AFTERWARDS, I enrolled in the San Carlos School of Fine Arts. The classes were held at night; by day I continued to go to elementary school. For the next two years, I led this burdensome existence. What sustained me was the discovery of the pre-Conquest art of Mexico, for which I conceived a passion that was to influence my entire artistic life. When I was thirteen, I received an art scholarship enabling me to attend San Carlos by day. I was, at first, a model student, industrious and obedient. Determined to learn all that tradition could teach me, I accepted whatever the teachers prescribed. My hard work earned me the highest grades and every possible prize. My older classmates became jealous of me and lost no opportunity of embarrassing me. For my part, I sought to be accepted as one of them despite the handicap of my extreme youth. One of my proudest achievements toward this end, when I was fourteen, was winning a competition for making up the dirtiest possible original expression. My prize-winning obscenity was: "Copulate with your mother and gargle with her menstrual juice." From then on I was nicknamed Chilebola, which means "extra hot chile." To live up to this imposing title, I adopted a tough swagger and would fight anybody at the drop of a hat. Physically I was still a fat, oversized little boy, but I possessed a tremendous store of energy, almost all of which I put into learning how to paint. Yet I was not happy artistically. The further I progressed in the academic European forms, the less I liked them and the more I was drawn to the old Mexican art. I particularly detested having to copy engraved replicas and plaster casts. Reaching the breaking point, I revolted noisily by organizing a strike with other discontented students. The immediate object of our protest was a priest accused of sexual corruption. Actually, we were demonstrating against the Mexican dictator, Porfirio Diaz, who was now openly flouting the anticlerical provisions written into the Constitution by Juarez. Of all living men, Diaz was most to blame for the stultification of life and art in Mexico. And it is to him that Mexico, today, owes its wedding-cake palace architecture and insipid public statuary. The student demonstration turned into a riot. As its leader, I was summoned before the authorities and expelled. Thus ended my formal training in art. Aside from a period of eight months in later years, when I was invited back to the San Carlos as its director, I would have no further connection with any academy. I was sixteen at the time I left the art school, the age when most students are first admitted.
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