Diego Rivera

Known for: Mexican mural painting; the National Palace murals

Diego Rivera spent years in Europe studying Cubism before returning to Mexico after the Revolution and devoting himself to mural painting, a form he believed could reach and educate a largely illiterate population. His murals for the National Palace in Mexico City, the Palace of Fine Arts, and the Detroit Institute of Arts are among the largest and most ambitious painted works of the twentieth century. His commission for the Rockefeller Center in New York was destroyed after he included a portrait of Lenin; the incident became one of the most discussed censorship events in the history of art.