Nude with Calla Lilies

7:00 AM

Diego Rivera, Nude with Calla Lilies, 1944

Do you hate this painting? Possibly, but more commonly, no, of course not. Look at the shadows and highlights our great artist, Rivera, uses. Look at his detail on the calla lilies; the depth in the centers of each flower, and the layers between them. He uses greens and reds for his shadows on the woman's back, making it a warm body in the lower center of the painting.

Rivera has painted multiple pieces with calla lilies, but why not throw in another, this time a naked woman as the focus. It's not like his compositions with struggling Mexican women, symbolizing the hardships that they go through. Instead, Rivera gets to spend his time staring at another naked woman, a respectable excuse.

Yes, let us praise a man who "devotes" himself to another woman, Frida Kahlo, through marriage, by celebrating other women. When Rivera was away from home, he found company in the beds of others, astonishingly he kept to female beds, thanks goes to all of his self control, and he left his "one and only" at home, to suffer through lonely nights and multiple miscarriages. A man like Diego Rivera should not get to be known as someone who celebrates women, who loves women, when he abuses the one closest to him.

Do you hate this painting? Maybe, just hate the man. Hate the people who think the world of him, because it is so simple to look past a person's characteristics when he can entertain so well.

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