The Market 1924

Diego Rivera made this fresco called ‘The Market’ on a wall at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico City. It’s just so full of people, an incredible feat of visual organization. The texture of this painting, the way the figures and forms are built up, it all feels so grounded. Rivera uses earth tones, browns, ochres, and muted greens, and this adds to the sense of the painting being rooted in the soil itself. Look at the way he renders the hats, it is quite stylized, but conveys a sense of depth and three-dimensionality. It's not just about what they look like but how they feel. Rivera’s work feels related to artists like Fernand Léger, who used simplified forms to represent the energy of modern life. And in Rivera, you get a sense of how art is always a conversation, echoing and transforming ideas across time and place. The painting has a feeling of being an endless, open-ended process.