Portrait of a Girl

Of all his Mexican contemporaries, Rivera witnessed the most success in the United States. In 1932, he became only the second individual artist featured in a retrospective at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, following Henri Matisse. Rivera also received major mural commissions throughout the 1930s from such American institutions as the San Francisco Stock Exchange, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and Rockefeller Center. The artist likewise took advantage of the lucrative market that developed for his easel paintings and works on paper among American collectors, who were attracted to Rivera’s style and subject matter. His focus on Mexico’s popular culture and Pre-Columbian heritage is apparent in the watercolor Portrait of a Girl, which depicts a barefoot girl in traditional indigenous dress.