Diego Rivera Quotes

#1. 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.

Diego Rivera

#2. 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.

Diego Rivera

#3. Marx made theory ... Lenin applied it with his sense of large-scale social organization ... And Henry Ford made the work of the socialist state possible.

Diego Rivera

#4. 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.

Diego Rivera

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

Diego Rivera

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

Diego Rivera

#7. 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.

Diego Rivera

#8. I've never believed in God. But I believe in Picasso.

Diego Rivera

#9. 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.

Diego Rivera

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

Diego Rivera

#11. 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.

Diego Rivera

#12. You have to trust a TRUE compliment as muc as a critique.

Diego Rivera

#13. 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.

Diego Rivera

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

Diego Rivera

#15. I knew how one climbing the mountain of worldly success can slip down into the river below without being conscious of the descent till he is already drowning.

Diego Rivera

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

Diego Rivera

#17. My cubist paintings are my most Mexican.

Diego Rivera

#18. Art is like ham-it nourishes people.

Diego Rivera

#19. I recommend her to you, not as a husband but as an enthusiastic admirer of her work, acid and tender, hard as steel and delicate and fine as a butterfly's wing, lovable as a beautiful smile, and as profound and cruel as the bitterness of life.

Diego Rivera

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

Diego Rivera