Sugar Cane- Diego Rivera

At the December 1931 opening of Rivera’s retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art, the artist presented five Mexican-themed mural panels. In January 1932 he added three more frescoes to the show that depict labor and construction inDepression-era New York.

Set on a sugar plantation, this portable mural introduces the tensions over labor, race, and economic inequity that simmered in Mexico after the Revolution. In the foreground, an Indian woman, with the traditional braids and white clothes of a peasant, cuts papayas from a tree while her children collect the fruit in reed baskets. Behind them, dark-skinned men with bowed heads gather bunches of sugar cane.

Fresco on reinforced cement in a galvanized-steel framework, 57 1/8 x 94 1/8" (145.1 x 239.1 cm). Philadelphia Museum of Art. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Herbert Cameron Morris, 1943. © 2011 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Currently at Moma