Mexican artist Diego Rivera includes images of calla lilies in many of his artworks. This painting shows a flower seller carrying a bundle of calla lilies in an open-air market. What other details do you notice? Look closely and you'll see several smaller figures behind the flower seller. What shapes do you see in this painting? Compare the unusual shape of the bright calla lilies to the more regular shapes of the figures. What else catches your eye about this painting?

Take another look at Flower Day. Two women are kneeling at the feet of the flower seller. One woman has gently looping braids, and the other carries a child on her back. The flower seller stands with head bowed. The cloth that binds the enormous bunch of flowers to the seller's back extends out from the knot just below the seller's chin in two triangular bands. The three figures also create a triangle. The calla lilies spring from the triangle at the top of the painting.

Rivera strongly believed in honoring the everyday life of Mexican people in his works of art. Flower Day, painted in 1925, is one of his earliest paintings of a flower seller. He made more than two dozen artworks of this subject. In nearly all of his work, Rivera found ways to celebrate Mexican culture and its connection to nature.

You can see Flower Day and other works of art by Diego Rivera this summer when LACMA's collection of Latin America art reopens.
Search Collections Online for other artworks by Diego Rivera.

Image:
Diego Rivera (Mexico, Guanajuato, 1886 - 1957)
Flower Day (Día de Flores), 1925
Oil on canvas, 58 x 47 1/2 in. (147.32 x 120.65 cm)
Los Angeles County Fund, 25.7.1
© 2008 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust. Reproduction authorized by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura.
Photo © 2008 Museum Associates/LACMA