Diego Rivera’s “California Miners” Sketchbook (1931): New Research on the Artist in California during the Great Depression

Abstract

While in San Francisco, California, in 1930 and 1931 to execute several mural commissions, including The Allegory of California and The Making of a Fresco, the famed Mexican muralist Diego Rivera also produced an associated sketchbook. In forty-nine charcoal drawings, plus two additional watercolor landscapes, Rivera sketched the land, industry, and people of Northern California, in particular miners and the mining environment, as well as important patrons of his work. In this article, we contextualize the sketchbook within the history of California, identify several sitters for Rivera’s portrait sketches, and additionally suggest reattributing one of the sketches to the artist’s wife, Frida Kahlo.