Diego Rivera's Lost Lineage: Archival Records, Art, and the Name He Passed Down

Discover key details about Diego Rivera's Lost Lineage: Archival Records, Art, and the Name He Passed Down.

Paris in 1916 offered little comfort to foreign artists. German zeppelins bombed city quarters, food was rationed, and coal prices climbed beyond reach. Diego Rivera had spent nearly a decade absorbing the European avant-garde, working alongside Pablo Picasso, Amedeo Modigliani, and Chaim Soutine. Sharing his studio at 26 Rue du Départ was Angelina Beloff, an accomplished Russian engraver and painter who had partnered with him since 1909.

Beloff gave birth to their son, Diego, in the summer of 1916. For Rivera, the birth briefly anchored his notoriously wandering focus. Friends from the Russian exile community noted his fascination with the infant, whom he drew obsessively in quick charcoal studies.

The warmth was short-lived. The winter of 1917 arrived with brutal frost. The studio lacked fuel. Rivera struggled to sell his Cubist canvases, and the meager payments Beloff earned from translation work were not enough to buy milk and medicine. When the child contracted a severe respiratory infection, described in contemporary letters as acute bronchitis or pulmonary influenza, the couple could neither afford adequate medical intervention nor warm their living quarters. Dieguito died in Beloff's arms before his second birthday.