When looking at murals and art by Diego Rivera, you can easily become overwhelmed by the details, culture, and stories. Rivera is known as one of the most famous Hispanic artists, and one that we often study in Spanish class. But, narrowing down his artistic career into a few lessons can be daunting. Even analyzing just one of his murals can be overwhelming.
To help you narrow down your art by Diego Rivera lessons, I am going to share with you my most unforgettable and successful Diego Rivera lesson plans. After much trial and error, these lessons were the most impactful with my high school Spanish students.
How to Start a Spanish Art Unit
I always recommend before diving into any one specific artist, that you first learn some art vocabulary in the target language. You cannot expect your students to excel at analyzing art without first laying the foundation for them. Here is a FREE LESSON on Spanish art vocabulary. It is a great starting point before you jump into the world of art by Diego Rivera.
Your art unit may also include other Hispanic artists, so if you are teaching about other artists, here are Frida Kahlo, Salvador Dali, and Pablo Picasso lesson plans. You will want to bookmark these blog posts to have more ideas for those lessons! For an overview on how to teach art in Spanish class, read this blog post.
After you’ve introduced your art vocabulary, now you’re ready to begin your Diego Rivera art lessons!
Divide and conquer a Mural
Rivera’s murals are extremely detailed. You can find tons of “mini-stories” or “vignettes” throughout each mural. And to be honest, it can be a bit overwhelming. So, I like to let my students divide and conquer the mural. If you make them responsible for analyzing the entire mural, you would not only lose their attention, but they wouldn’t put in the same amount of effort as if they had a small segment to dive into. In the past, when analyzing I have found these activities to be helpful:
- Print the murals out – I had to print each section on 8.5×11 paper, and then tape them together to form one large mural. The next step is the most important… laminate!!! Once it is laminated, students can use dry erase markers to find the vignettes and circle them. Having hands-on experiences makes learning about art more engaging.
- Identify the vignettes for your students, like you see below in the Mercado de Tlatelolco. I have circled and color-coded the different vignettes. With this, I give students a worksheet to identify what they see happening in each vignette. This is just a rough start, an overview of the mural.
- Next, they dive deeper into an assigned vignette(s) with a small group. You can ask them to analyze the colors, textures, background, foreground, people, actions, objects, how it relates to the entire mural, etc.
- After each group analyzes their assigned vignette, they should then present their information to the class. This will help tie everything together into one large mural.
If you’re interested in this lesson and more, you can get my entire Diego Rivera lesson here.
El Asombroso Mundo de Zamba
The Asombroso Mundo de Zamba videos will always be my favorite videos to use in class. They are engaging, informative, funny, and cultural. In this episode, Zamba travels with Diego into his Mercado de Tlatelolco mural. I always start my lessons on murals with this video before having students divide and conquer the various sections.
The video gives a brief overview of Diego’s style creating murals and then a tour of the Mercado de Tlatelolco mural, pointing out the various elements and people. It is very informative and comprehensible.
Scavenger Hunt in Art by Diego Rivera
Catching every small detail in a mural can be nearly impossible, especially in “La unidad panamericana” or “Panamerican Unity.” Each panel of this painting is so incredibly detailed that it could be its own artwork. I discovered this amazing website that lets you zoom into each panel and click on the different elements to learn more.
I wanted to hold my students accountable for going through this website, so I turned it into a scavenger hunt with an accompanying worksheet. You can find the worksheet here.
Read his biography
There is a very interesting story behind Diego’s inspiration for painting Mexican culture. He was originally viewed as an artist with cubist tendencies, but after a trip to Tehuantepec, Rivera’s art became heavily influenced by Mexican culture.
And you can’t leave out his marriage to Frida Kahlo. Their relationship played a major role in their works and lives. Anecdotes like these are important to include in one of your first lessons so that students understand Diego’s inspiration for his artworks.
You can find 3 differentiated Diego Rivera biographies in English or Spanish in my TpT store.
Create a class mural
The days where my students created large group murals were some of my favorite classes. I saw the most creative artwork, brainstorming, and collaboration amongst students that I had ever seen. When I say large group murals, I really mean it. I divided my classes in half, and each half worked together to create a lifesize mural.
In order to relate this to Rivera’s style, I let each group choose an element of Hispanic culture as the focus of their mural. Some chose holidays like Día de muertos; others chose sports like fútbol, and others chose historical events or time periods like the Inca Empire. Each group was divided into pairs. Each pair designed a “vignette” to form one part of the larger mural. All parts had to interconnect and weave together. In the images below, you can see how my students successfully did that.
A great example of students carrying the same elements throughout is with the mural on “la frontera.” You can see how they worked together to line up the border in each vignette (each group had two pages of paper, and they chose to place theirs on top of one another). Each group’s vignette had the border wall through the middle, but different stories on each side of the wall.
Paintings of Mexicanidad Art by Diego Rivera
Rivera painted much more than murals. He is also known for his paintings of everyday Mexican life. I use gallery walks a lot when teaching about art. Print a handful of his paintings out (or set up virtual stations with one painting on each chromebook set up around the room). Some of my favorite paintings are: Indian Warrior, Flower Carrier, and The Weaver.
As students circulate around the room, they can add post-it notes, have discussions, or take notes on a brainstorming worksheet about the people, clothing, facial expressions, elements of Mexicanidad, and more.
I have also used a virtual art gallery with my students, but you can do a physical one with paintings printed out… whatever works for you and your classroom setup.
You can find many of these lessons within my Diego Rivera lessons and projects product here! It is one of my favorites to teach, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
If you enjoyed these lesson plans, you can purchase a Hispanic Artist bundle pack with complete lessons and activities for 5 different artists, including Dalí, Kahlo, Botero, and Picasso.
Please share any additional Diego Rivera resources that you love using below. Together, we can create a comprehensive list of materials for a Spanish art by Diego Rivera unit.
