Flower Day (Día de Flores)

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Flower Day (Día de Flores)

Mexico, 1925
Paintings
Oil on canvas
58 × 47 1/2 in. (147.32 × 120.65 cm)
Los Angeles County Fund (25.7.1)
Currently on public view:
Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Since gallery displays may change often, please contact us before you visit to make certain this item is on view.

Curator Notes

Throughout his career, Diego Rivera created numerous easel paintings and watercolors representing the indigenous peoples of Mexico....
Throughout his career, Diego Rivera created numerous easel paintings and watercolors representing the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Flower Day (Día de flores) is his earliest and most accomplished depiction of a seller of calla lilies. The unusual perspective of the flowers, which are seen from above, and the blocklike forms of the figures are stylistic devices derived from Rivera's earlier cubist paintings. Flower Day (Día de flores) is Rivera's first major painting to enter a public collection in the United States. It was acquired by the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art (LACMA's parent institution) after winning first prize in the First Pan-American Exhibition of Oil Paintings (1925).

Ilona Katzew, 2008
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Bibliography

  • Arnason, H.H., and Marla F. Prather. History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

  • Rosenthal, Mark. Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo in Detroit. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015.
  • Arnason, H.H., and Marla F. Prather. History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.

  • Rosenthal, Mark. Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo in Detroit. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015.
  • Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA's 50th Anniversary. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2015.
  • Magaloni, Diana, Michael Govan, and Miguel Fernámdez Félix, eds. Picasso & Rivera: Conversaciones a Través del Tiempo. Mexico City: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes; Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2017.
  • Donahue, Kenneth. Los Angeles County Museum of Art Handbook. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1977.
  • Kettenmann, Andrea. Diego Rivera, 1886-1957: a Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art. Cologne: Taschen, 1997.
  • Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution. Mexico City, Mexico:  Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Landucci Editores, 1999.
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art.  New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
  • Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Transformation: the LACMA Campaign. Los Angeles: Museum Associates, 2008.
  • Muchnic, Suzanne. LACMA So Far: Portrait of a Museum in the Making. San Marino, California: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2015.
  • Magaloni, Diana and Michael Govan, eds. Picasso Rivera: Conversations Across Time. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Munich: DelMonico Books-Prestel, 2016.
  • Haskell, Barbara, ed. Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945. New York: Whitney Museum of Art ; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
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Exhibition history

  • Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film Los Angeles, CA, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, September 22, 2013 - February 2, 2014