Tag: murals

Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera, “Automotive Assembly Line”, Detail of One of Twenty-Seven Fresco Panels, North Wall, Detroit Institute of Arts, Michigan

When the Mexican artist Diego Rivera arrived in Detroit in 1932 to paint the walls at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the city was a leading industrial center of the world. It was also the city that was hit the hardest by the Great Depression. Industrial production and the workforce were a third of what they had been before the 1929 Crash.

The space Rivera was given to paint was aligned on an east/west/north/south axis. Rivera utilized this architectural orientation in a symbolic way. The manufacture of the 1932 Ford V-8 at the Ford Motor Company’s River Rouge plant is captured in the two major panels on the north and south walls.

On the north wall, Rivera captured all the processes related to the assembly of the motor. The blast furnace glows orange and red at extreme temperatures to make molten steel that is poured into molds to make ingots that are then milled into sheets. All the major processes related to the manufacture of the motor of the car from mold-making in the upper left to the final assembly of the motor on the assembly line in the foreground are accurately rendered with engineering precision.

Diego Rivera wove the processes together through the use of the serpentine conveyors and assembly lines. The composition is grounded by two rows of white milling machines that stand as sentinels in the center of the wall and march into the background to the blast furnace.

Richard Taddei

The Artwork of Richard Taddei

Born in New York City in 1946, Richard Taddei is an American painter known for his male figurative works which are abstracted and seen through opposing picture planes and geometrical spaces. Raised in New Hyde Park in Long Island, he attended the Art School of the University of Toledo, Ohio in 1964. Taddei transferred to New York’s Pratt Institute of Art in 1967 to study architecture and art; later in the year he traveled to Europe to explore its art museums. 

In 1968, Taddei began mentoring under the Kentucky-born artist Edward Melcarth, known for his Renaissance-influenced illustrations and paintings. Through Melcarth, he was introduced to the techniques employed in the art of Trompe l’Oeil and Venice’s seventeenth-century paintings. Taddei met photographer and designer John Loring in the same year; they would live together and form a design collaboration for creations at Tiffany & Company. 

After a move to a SoHo loft in the early half of the 1970s, Richard Taddei began several personal associations which influenced his work and life. In 1972, he traveled to Italy where he lived and worked alongside Edward Melcarth; later in the same year, Taddei met Peggy Guggenheim, the entrepreneur Malcolm Forbes who began collecting his work, and the nature-inspired oil painter David Hill. In 1975, Taddei lived in Paris for a year with David Hill and Canadian painter Joseph Plaskett, both of whom influenced his figurative work.

After a 1976 move to the TriBeCa area of New York City, Taddei had his first painting exhibitions with the art dealer Jualian Pretto and later presented work in a group show curated by Keith Haring in the East Village. In the 1980s, Taddei established a career in the decorative arts in which, among other works, he created designs for china, scarves, backdrops and table settings for Tiffany & Company. Taddei also created murals for events at New York City’s Tavern on the Green, the Metropolitan Museum’s Party of the Year, and the Annual Gala at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum. 

Richard Taddei’s paintings had appeared in many galleries, both in group and solo exhibitions. These include many group exhibitions in Provincetown, Massachusetts, including two solo exhibitions. Taddei’s work has also been shown in galleries in New York City, including the contemporary Hal Bromm Gallery. His most recent solo exhibition of new work was the January-February 2022 “Looking at Men” held at the Fine Art Gallery of the Wallkill River School located in New York’s Hudson Valley. 

Richard Taddei’s paintings have been championed by the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation and has been represented by the MDH Fine Arts Gallery. Images of Taddei’s work and contact information can be found at the artist’s site located at: https://www.richardtaddei.com 

Bottom Insert Image: Richard Taddei, “Italian Sailors”, 1986, Oil on Canvas, 76.2 x 111.8 cm, Private Collection