Diego Rivera Quotes

To be an artist, one must . . . never shirk from the truth as he understands it, never withdraw from life

All art is propaganda. ... The only difference is the kind of propaganda. Since art is essential for human life, it can't just belong to the few. Art is the universal language, and it belongs to all mankind. All painters have been propagandists or else they have not been painters. ... Every artist who has been worth anything in art has been such a propagandist. ... Every strong artist has been a propagandist. I want to be a propagandist and I want to be nothing else. ... I want to use my art as a weapon.

As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see.

The rôle of the artist is that of a soldier of the revolution.

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

I know now that he who hopes to be universal in his art must plant in his own soil. Great art is like a tree, which grows in a particular place and has a trunk, leaves, blossoms, boughs, fruit, and roots of its own. The more native art is, the more it belongs to the entire world, because taste is rooted in nature. When art is true, it is one with nature. This is the secret of primitive art and also of the art of the mastersMichelangelo, Czanne, Seurat, and Renoir. The secret of my best work is that it is Mexican.

I've never believed in God, but I believe in Picasso.

Looking back upon my work today, I think the best I have done grew out of things deeply felt, the worst from a pride in mere talent.

Art is like ham-it nourishes people.

July 13, 1954 was the most tragic day of my life. I had lost my beloved Frida forever. To late now I realized that the most wonderful part of my life had been my love for Frida.

Only the work of art itself can raise the standard of taste.

If I ever loved a woman, the more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her. Frida was only the most obvious victim of this disgusting trait.

Through her paintings, she breaks all the taboos of the woman's body and of female sexuality.

The artist must try to raise the level of taste of the masses, not debase himself to the level of unformed and impoverished taste.

Never before had a woman put such agonizing poetry on canvas as Frida did

My cubist paintings are my most Mexican.

I did not know it then, but Frida had already become the most important fact in my life. And would continue to be, up to the moment she died, 27 years later.

Every good composition is above all a work of abstraction. All good painters know this. But the painter cannot dispense with subjects altogether without his work suffering impoverishment.

I am an atheist and I consider religions to be a form of collective neurosis. I am not an enemy of the Catholics, as I am not an enemy of the tuberculars, the myopic or the paralytics; you cannot be an enemy of the sick, only their good friend in order to help them cure themselves.

I do not believe in God, yet I believe in Picasso.