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In the early years of this century, the major manufacturing cities of the American Midwest, such as Chicago or Cleveland or Pittsburgh, were eager to show that they were not just grey industrial centres. As part of the so-called City Beautiful Movement, the local captains of industry used some of their profits to build impressive and conspicuous art galleries and museums, filling them with European masterpieces of art. The great car-making centre of Detroit was no exception. However, in 1930 the Detroit Institute of Arts' director, William Valentiner, decided to give the DIA a more local focus by commissioning a mural celebrating the city's industrial achievements.
By the 1920s, Detroit was already world famous as the home of the moving assembly-line. Pioneered by local industrialist Henry Ford, mass production was regarded as proof of the dynamic inventiveness of the free enterprise system. However, the 'Detroit Industry' (1933) frescoes which celebrated this triumph of Yankee ingenuity were not the work of an American artist but of a Mexican Communist, Diego Rivera. As recently as 1927, Rivera's political beliefs had prompted him to caricature Ford, John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan in his Mexican mural 'Wall Street Banquet'. He would later become aware of the tension between industrial and finance capitalism that made Ford's inclusion in this trio incongruous. But more importantly, he, like Lenin, and Hitler for that matter, was predisposed to view Ford's technological achievements positively.
Born into a middle-class family in Guanajuato on December 8th, 1886, Rivera acquired the nickname of 'the Engineer' because he enjoyed taking his toys apart, drawing the components and, after reassembling them, watching closely how they worked. His interest in mechanics carried over to living things, too. Once as a child, (and to his mother's utter horror), he was caught trying to dissect a live mouse on the kitchen table in order to observe its inner workings in operation.
His parents' relative wealth and political connections ensured that Rivera could pursue his artistic interests in Europe. Although his father had been a liberal councillor, Diego, taking a more radical line on his return to post-revolutionary Mexico in 1921, helped to develop the Communist Party. During his lengthy stay in Europe (1907-10, 1311-21) Rivera studied the great Italian Renaissance muralists...