Curator, Leah Dickerman: This grand painting was commissioned by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who was one of the founding patrons of The Museum of Modern Art.
David Rockefeller, Jr.: Curator, Leah Dickerman.
Leah Dickerman: And in fact, Rivera made this picture while he was on the steamship chugging up to New York from Mexico for the MoMA show, in a makeshift studio space that had been set aside by the captain.
This is a distinctly Mexican scene. You can see it with the flag in the center. It shows a village fiesta. The women are waiting to be chosen to dance. And in the front you see two guys facing off.
It's likely that they were from rival indigenous groups like the Zapotec or Mixtec groups, who often skirmished in the town. So this is a kind of ‘West Side Story’ in a Mexican setting.
It depicts an image in the region of Tehuantepec, which is south of Mexico City and distinctly more tropical. And it became an important place for Diego Rivera while he was painting his Ministry of Education murals, one of the famous cycles that brought him great celebrity in the years before the MoMA show.