October is Arts and Humanities Month nationally and in Little Rock. Americans for the Arts has identified a different arts topic to be posted for each day in the month.  Starting off is Art I Can’t Live Without.

For me, it is Diego Rivera’s DOS MUJERES, or PORTRAIT OF TWO WOMEN.

Painted in 1914, it is part of the permanent collection of the Arkansas Arts Center.  This oil on canvas, which stands six and a half feet tall and five and a half feet wide, is a portrait of Angelina Beloff and Maria Dolores Bastian.

Influenced by cubists such as Picasso, Rivera adopted fracturing of form, use of multiple perspective points, and flattening of the picture plane.  Yet his take on this style of painting is distinctive.  He uses brighter colors and a larger scale than many early cubist pictures. Rivera also features highly textured surfaces executed in a variety of techniques.

The painting was a gift to the Arkansas Arts Center by Abby Rockefeller Mauzé, sister of Arkansas Governor Winthrop Rockefeller.