Nude with Necklace

1922–1929

Meeting Frida Kahlo

While still married to Guadalupe Marín, Rivera met the art student Frida Kahlo in Mexico City; a passionate affair began between them, and after his divorce from Marín they married.

1928

Meeting Alfred H. Barr Jr.

While still in the Soviet Union, Rivera met the American Alfred H. Barr Jr., soon to become his friend and patron and the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

1929

Expelled from the Party and dismissed as director of the Academy

Having watched Stalinisation in the USSR, Rivera came to hold Trotskyist views; in 1929 he was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party and removed as director of the San Carlos Academy.

21 agosto 1929

Married: Frida Kahlo

1930s

Asylum for Leon Trotsky

Rivera obtained from President Lázaro Cárdenas asylum in Mexico for the political exile Leon Trotsky and sheltered him and his wife Natalia Sedova in his own house; later a conflict arose between them.

1931

Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art

In November 1931 the Museum of Modern Art in New York mounted a retrospective of Rivera's work, which Frida Kahlo attended with him; it took place shortly before he began the Detroit murals.