- Title
- Flower Day (Día de flores)
- Date Made
- 1925
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 58 × 47 1/2 in. (147.32 × 120.65 cm)
- Accession Number
- 25.7.1
- Collecting Area
- Latin American Art
- Curatorial Notes
Throughout his career, Diego Rivera created numerous easel paintings and watercolors representing the Indigenous peoples of Mexico. Flower Day (Día de flores) is one of his earliest and most accomplished depictions 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 as well as his interest in Mesoamerican art.
Flower Day was 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 in 1925 (https://archive.org/details/calanhm_000627).
Ilona Katzew
2008
- Selected Bibliography
- Kettenmann, Andrea. Diego Rivera, 1886-1957: a Revolutionary Spirit in Modern Art. Cologne: Taschen, 1997.
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2003.
Arnason, H.H., and Marla F. Prather. History of Modern Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Photography. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998.
- Diego Rivera: Art and Revolution. Mexico City, Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Landucci Editores, 1999.
- Rosenthal, Mark. Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo in Detroit. Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 2015.
- Muchnic, Suzanne. LACMA So Far: Portrait of a Museum in the Making. San Marino, California: Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, 2015.
- Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA's 50th Anniversary. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 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.
- 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.
- Haskell, Barbara, ed. Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925-1945. New York: Whitney Museum of Art; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020.
- Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Transformation: the LACMA Campaign. Los Angeles: Museum Associates, 2008.
- Selected Exhibition History
- Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film. September 22, 2013 - February 2, 2014
- Copyright
- © Banco de México Diego Rivera Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
