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Self-Portrait, 1941.

Oil on canvas, 61 × 43 cm.

Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton.

1886: Born on the 8th or 13th December 1886 in Guanajuato, he romanticised his life so much that even his date of birth became a myth. He was a mixture of Mexican, Spanish, Indian, African, Italian, Jewish, Russian and Portuguese origins.

1892: Moves to Mexico.

1894: He enters the Colegio del Padre Antonio where he remains for three months. He then moves to the Colegio Católico Carpentier which he leaves for the Liceo Católico Hispano-Mexicano.

1897: Rivera receives a grant which allows him to study full-time at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts.

1906: He graduates with honours.

1907: Rivera begins his travels in Europe. He goes first to Spain to study with one of the principal portraitists of Madrid, Eduardo Chicarro y Aguera. He then leaves for France where he discovers the artistic life of Montparnasse. He becomes friends with Modigliani.

1914: He meets Picasso in his studio, who approves of his work and admits Rivera to his circle. This is a great opportunity and an opening into the world of such celebrities as Juan Gris, Guillaume Appolinaire, Robert Delaunay, Fernard Léger and Albert Gleizes. He enters into a relationship with the painter Marie Vorobieff, but marries Angelina Beloff. He also has several mistresses with whom he has brief affairs.

1920: In January Rivera takes the train to Milan. His travels in Italy last seventeen months and allow him to discover the art of painting frescoes. He returns to Mexico full of this knew-found knowledge and ready to devote himself to mural painting. The government offers him the walls of the Anfiteatro Bolívar (National Preparatory School of Mexico).

1922: In June he marries Guadalupe (Lupe) Marín; they have two daughters. At the end of the year he becomes a member of the Communist Party.

1924: Works in the Chapingo Chapel and at the National School of Agriculture.

1927: Travels in the Soviet Union. Divorces Lupe Marín.

1929: Returns to Mexico. In August Rivera marries Frida Kahlo, who was eighteen years old on the day of their marriage. In September he receives a proposition to paint a fresco at the palace of the conqueror of Mexico, Hernán Cortés, in Cuernavaca.

1930: Rivera goes to the United States. He paints at the School of Fine Arts of California, the University of California, Berkeley, and the San Francisco Art Institute.

1931: Returns to Mexico, and the famous house of Diego and Frida is built. In November they return to the United States for the exhibition of Rivera’s work at MoMA.

1932–1933: Works on the twenty-seven panels at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

1933: Start of the project at the Rockefeller Center in New York.

1934: Returns to Mexico and paints the mural at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico.

1939: Divorces Frida Kahlo.

1940: Final voyage to the United States. Rivera paints the frescos for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco. On the 8th December, Diego’s possible birthdate, he remarries Frida.

1949: Fifty-year retrospective at the National Institute of Fine Arts in Mexico.

1954: Frida Kahlo dies on the 13th July.

1955: Marries Emma Hurtado, his agent since 1946.

1957: Diego Rivera dies at San Angel, on November 24th.