Nude with Calla Lilies 1944

Diego Rivera's 'Nude with Calla Lilies', wherever it was made, is just so good. I can imagine him building up the colours and textures in layers to make a surface that pulsates, a world that throbs. The monumental forms of the white flowers dominate, of course, like a tidal wave about to break, and the nude figure almost disappears behind them. Rivera may have put himself in the shoes of this anonymous sitter: overwhelmed by the sensuous shapes of the flowers. I can imagine him thinking about Cezanne, but also the Mexican muralists, playing with the tension between flatness and depth, volume and surface. The painting is confident but awkward, like a dance you're not sure you know the steps to. It makes you realize, again, that artists build on top of one another's ideas. That’s how they create a new way of seeing, of thinking, of feeling.