How did you start working as the assistant of Diego Riviera grandson?
I went to Mexico to travel around and I met a girl who is the daughter of Pedro Diego Alvarado, a Mexican artist and grandson of the Mexican artist Diego Riviera. She told me go to her house and ask her dad if he had some work to offer me. So, I did, I appeared at the house and said “hey do you have a job for me?” and he said no, and I just stayed at the studio because it is beautiful and I started to take photos around and he was like “Ok, why don’t help me cut the canvas and help out at the studio?” And the next day he invited me to have breakfast and we started to work together.
I like the way that he sees things, he is a super good photographer. He learned with Cartier Bresson and he is super close friends of Josef Koudelka, and all the guys of Magnum.
The most special thing that I see of him, is his eye to create paintings. He takes a photo and then he works on it, he changes the colours and changes things of the photo and turns it into a painting it’s interesting to see art though his eyes.
Did he share with you any stories about Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo?
We don’t talk about this a lot because it’s like the easy conversation. So, we talk about other artists like the painter Botero and photographer Josef Koudelka, that I have had the opportunity to know because they are friends with his family. And I think that is more interesting for me than Diego Rivera and Frida. Their story is super easy to know, and everyone knows about it. I asked him about other people, for example, what happened to Garciela Irturbide when she was 30, and what she did. Those kinds of things.
Diego Rivera is easy, the entire city is filled with his stuff if I want to know more about him, I can go to a museum and with Frida is like a weird relationship, because she was just the last wife of Diego Rivera but she doesn’t have children. He’s the grandson from Lupe Marine and Diego Rivera so it’s another story apart from Frida Kahlo.
I have talked with him about the art of Frida Kahlo and I think our opinion about her is similar. She is not an idol for me, but I like her art. I think she was a super special woman but to know her in person, and share life with her, but I as an artist, her work is not so spectacular or special to me, although its beautiful. She had made only 30 paintings in all of her life and it’s like a really small body of work.