Posted on Sun, Jul. 20, 2008

At 81, Mexican muralist Diego Rosales, whose works are on exhibit in South Miami, remembers with matter-of-fact clarity the day a fortuitous encounter changed his life forever.

It occurred in 1944, when Rosales, a 17-year-old adventurer who had taught himself to draw, was wandering San Francisco looking for work.

A crowd on Market Street caught his attention. When Rosales asked what was going on, he was told that the famous muralist Diego Rivera was speaking to the group of people gathered around him. Four years earlier, Rivera had completed his famous Pan American Unity mural in the city, and Rosales believes Rivera was in town to promote his work. Rosales waited patiently until he found an opportunity to approach the iconic artist whose murals interpreted the social and political history of Mexico in splendid color, filling the halls of the capital's National Palace with vivid images of indigenous Aztecs and conquering Spaniards.

The two Diegos chatted about having come from the same neighborhood of Mexico City, Coyoacán. Rivera gave Rosales a card with his address and invited the young man to visit.

''I showed him some of my drawings, and he sent me to school. He was very generous with his helpers,'' says Rosales, who went on to become one of Rivera's assistants from 1947 to 1952 and is one of a handful of surviving front-line witnesses to the period known as the Mexican Mural Renaissance.

In Miami recently to inaugurate Diego Rosales Works at Instituto Cultural de Mexico en Miami (Mexican Cultural Center in Miami), Rosales cheerfully shared stories of his time with Rivera. He then traveled to Washington, D.C., to deliver a talk at the InterAmerican Development Bank.

''We thought it would be interesting to hear his stories about an important time in Mexican mural history,'' says Félix Angel, director of the IDB's Cultural Center. ``Diego Rosales is a humble man who, thanks to life's coincidences, had a front seat to the work of a great muralist.''

Mural painting in Mexico dates back thousands of years to when the Aztecs and Mayans depicted scenes of battles and celebrations, human sacrifices and rites of passage in their temples and palatial dwellings. Then in the 1920s, at the end of the Mexican Revolution, Diego Rivera and two other artists, José Clemente Orozco and David Siquieros -- they were known as ''Los tres grandes'' (The Three Big Ones) -- began a period of mural-making that had a significant impact in the United States and internationally.

Rosales says he assisted in the preparation of paints and surfaces on such significant works as Disembarkment of the Spanish at Veracruz, the 1951 fresco in Mexico City's Palacio Nacional, and Water, Origin of Life in the capital city's Parque Chapultepec.

''In this massive and elaborate mural, Diego Rivera chose to incorporate the figure of Diego Rosales as a laborer carrying a shovel,'' says Bernardo Junco, director of an online effort to showcase Rosales' work at www.diegorosalesmuseum.com and to exhibit some of Rosales' collection of pre-Columbian art.

Rosales says he also assisted Rivera on Pesadilla de guerra y sueño de paz (Nightmare of War and Dream of Peace), a mural on canvas painted in 1952 which depicted Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung offering a dove of peace. The Mexican official who commissioned the work refused to exhibit it because of its pro-communist content, and the mural has been lost for more than half a century.

Rosales says he remembers that Rivera often worked for 36 hours straight, making it difficult for his assistants to keep up. He worked so intensely, Rosales says, that he forgot to eat but prodded his helpers to ``Go. Go, and have some food yourselves.''

''By the time he came to eat, there was no food left,'' Rosales says.

Once, Rosales says, he and other assistants got carried away with applying a coat of paint to Rivera's sketch of a mural, and when Rivera saw it, 'he approached us waving his cane and scolded us: `Remember, the mural is mine!' ''

He made them erase everything and start again.

Following in the footsteps of an icon is hard, and Rosales says that for most of his life he has been trying to develop his style.

''I wanted to separate myself from his influence and do more around country themes, local works, instead of the national murals for which Rivera is known,'' says Rosales, whose mural Los precursores de la revolución técnica (The Precursors to the Technological Revolution) is installed in a government building in the port city of Lázaro Cárdenas, Michoacán.

Fourteen pieces by Rosales, including two murals, are on display through July 30 in South Miami. Also shown is a sketch Rosales drew for La puerta de Latinoamerica (The Door to Latin America), a mural he dreams of creating in Miami with the help of young artists.

Standing before two murals -- one a rendering of a typical fiesta pueblerina, a township celebration, and the other a portrait of Emiliano Zapata, a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution -- Rosales is delighted to be reunited with his work.

His murals feature cockfights, fireworks and a theme he calls his ``tribute to the countryman's working tools -- the pick, the machete and the shovel.''

He created the murals in 1954 for a restaurant.

''I can't remember the last time I saw these. They left me so long ago,'' he says. ``After half a century, one forgets.''

Asked which of his pieces he loves most, Rosales offers a piquant smile.

''It's all or none,'' he says. ``It's like asking me which woman I have loved the most. Well, it depends.''

And like his famous mentor, Rosales has loved many, many women. ''Ten children carry my last name,'' he says. ``I have been married four times, but I'm currently single, if you want to know.''