It is obvious that he used Cubist space and stylization in his later work, most notably in the compositions of his monumental mural projects. The compositional device of broken-up space and multiple picture planes seen in cubist paintings was effectively employed by Rivera to describe multiple narratives within one compositional painting plane, notably in his mural series on the History of Mexico at the National Palace in Mexico City. But Western Art historical references of his later mural and easel work after 1921 are based mainly on earlier European traditions of Renaissance narrative painting, Mexican Folk Culture and Native Mexican mural painting of the pre-Columbian world. The history of fresco wall paintings done by indigenous peoples of Mexico from pre-Columbian cultures should not be forgotten or Rivera’s historical connection to the archeological past of pre-Columbian mural painting be ignored by anyone wanting to eurocentricize the production of Rivera’s middle and later years as well as his European phase of (1911-1921) and explain his middle and later murals as being influenced only by what he saw in Italy. From his youth Rivera had an interest and respect for the pre-Columbian art and culture of Mexico, his painting Zapatista Landscape (The Guerrilla) of 1915 is an example an early work that has pre-Columbian references within its composition.

Zapatista Landscape (The Guerrilla), 1915

The “sleepy eye” of the Aztec rain god Tlaloc is painted on the sombrero of the Cubist guerrilla. Through out his life as an artist Diego Rivera not only reflected on Western Art historical traditions but referred to the pre-Columbian as well. After 1921 Rivera’s art historical references turns more towards pre-modernist approaches of artmaking and away from the modernist, he employed the traditional compositional, drawing and painting methods of Renaissance artists to describe the condition of the Mexican people of the 20th century in a way that was socially acceptable to the masses, he could not have done this within the context of pure Cubism. Pablo Picasso’s Guernica was only possible within the sophisticated confines of an art educated Paris and would have been hard to explain to the masses of Mexico City, Rivera knew where to draw his narrative examples from and the examples of Renaissance church frescos served him well in communicating to the Masses in Mexico.