1952.10, Diego Rivera, Portrait of Dr. Otto Ruhle

Diego Rivera embraced the belief that art plays an important role in creating social change within a society. His principal career as a muralist depended heavily on his Marxist and socialist politics, views which often caused trouble with people and organizations that commissioned his work. Rivera preferred murals to easel paintings, but maintained a steady output of drawings and small paintings, mostly concerned with Mexican folk life. His most powerful portraits were of his second and third wives, Lupe Marín and Frida Kahlo, and people with whom the artist felt a special bond. Rivera's portrait of Dr. Otto Ruhle appears to fall into this latter category.

Rivera painted Otto Ruhle during a six-year dry spell in which he received no mural commissions. We do not know how or when the two met; however, only that they shared similar political views, and that Ruhle, like Rivera, was involved in Mexico's post-revolutionary education reform. Born in Germany, Ruhle (1874-1942) was a schoolteacher who believed education was the leading means of achieving social reform. Deeply involved with leftist politics in Germany, he nonetheless spent much of his turbulent career in opposition to the prevailing agenda of the newly emergent Communist Workers Party. In 1936, Ruhle immigrated to Mexico, becoming an advisor on education to Mexico's socialist government. He continued to write for American Marxist journals, championing the factory worker as the ideal proletarian at a time when Rivera was working on the Detroit murals for General Motors. 

Rivera painted Ruhle two years before his death. Slouching in his chair, his large hands idle, Ruhle bears a brooding, thoughtful look bordering on disgust or resignation. Rivera has emphasized his broad forehead, perhaps alluding to his intellectual prowess, yet his portrayal has an informal quality more common in his paintings of family and friends than in those of his political associates.  

Rivera_Diego: ULAN: 500025126

Mexico (nation): TGN: 7005560

canvas: AAT: 300014078

oil paint: AAT: 300015050

painting (visual works): AAT: 300033618

Kahlo_Frida: ULAN: 500030701

communism: AAT: 300055519

education: AAT: 300054360

folk art (traditional art): 300056487

Germany (nation): TGN: 7000084

Marxism: AAT: 300055528

murals: AAT: 300182732

patronage: AAT: 300055736

politics: AAT: 300055537

portrait: AAT: 300015637

proletariat: AAT: 300055486

revolution: AAT: 300055312

socialism: AAT: 300055533

teachers (educators): AAT: 300025529

1952: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, gift of Elizabeth B. Blake [1] 

[1] The name of the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, founded in 1933, was changed to the Dallas Museum of Art in 1983.

Apply to objects where number equals 1952.10