Angelina Beloff

Angelina Beloff (born Angelina Petrovna Belova; ; June 23, 1879 – December 30, 1969) was a Russian-born artist who did most of her work in Mexico. However, she is better known as Diego Rivera’s first wife, and her work has been overshadowed by his and that of his later wives. She studied art in Saint Petersburg and then went to begin her art career in Paris in 1909. This same year she met Rivera and married him. In 1921, Rivera returned to Mexico, leaving Beloff behind and divorcing her. She never remarried. In 1932, through her contacts with various Mexican artists, she was sponsored to live and work in the country. She worked as an art teacher, a marionette show creator and had a number of exhibits of her work in the 1950s. Most of her work was done in Mexico, using Mexican imagery, but her artistic style remained European. In 1978, writer Elena Poniatowska wrote a novel based on her life.

Life

Angelina Beloff was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia during the Tsarist period, and raised there by an intellectual family. She entered the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts in 1905 as the city then was the center of Russian art. Beloff's professors encouraged her to move to France to continue studying, which she did after her parents died in 1909. She lived in Paris with support of the Russian government as well as a trust fund from her family, working first in the studio of Henri Matisse and later in the studio of Spanish painter Hermenegildo Anglada Camarasa. During this time, her skills developed, as she learned the printmaking techniques of engraving in both wood and metal and earned recognition for her painting and drawing. She also worked as an art teacher. They had one child named Miguel Ángel, who died of lung complications when he was only fourteen months old.

The nearly twelve-year relationship created her link to Mexico and brought about her friendships with David Alfaro Siqueiros, Adolfo Best Maugard, Ángel Zárraga, Roberto Montenegro and others. It is the most important collection of her work as it contains an assortment of drawings, watercolors, graphics and an oil that shows the extent of her talent. The collection was acquired by the museum in 1994, and with the exception of the oil called Tepoztlan, all are from her early career, created in France in the 1910s and 1920s. They include thirty original woodcuts commissioned by the Arthem Fayard publishing house to illustrate the novel Ariane, June fille russe (Ariane, the young Russian girl) by Claude Anet. Other important works are watercolors and dry point to illustrate "To Build a Fire” by Jack London.

She was one of a number of foreign artists invited to Mexico to help shape the country's cultural scene in the decades after the Mexican Revolution. She started working as a drawing and engraving teacher for schools and workshops for the Secretaría de Educación Pública in 1932 and later with the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. Much of her teaching work was related to creating children's theater, especially marionettes, puppets and stage scenery. In the 1930s, SEP supported the creation of marionette and puppet theaters, and Beloff was the main promoter of this work, as it was perceived as a form of teaching students. She created a number of notable marionettes including one called “Pastillita.” She also published Muñecos animados, historia, técnica y función educativa del teatro de muñecos en México y en el mundo in 1945.

She was a member of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios starting in 1934, the Sociedad Mexicana de Grabadores in 1947, the Galería Espira in the 1930s, the Sociedad para el Impulso de las Arts Plásticas in 1948 and the Salón de las Plástica Mexicana in 1949.

During her life, her work was eclipsed by her relationship with Rivera, along with his other wives, Guadalupe Marín and Frida Kahlo. Her work is virtually unknown in Russia and France, although recognized by a number of academics. There are no major collections in her memory and exhibitions of her work are rare. There was a showing of her work, focusing on her engravings in the 1980s at the Museo Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo. In 2012, there was a retrospective of her work at the Museo Mural Diego Rivera with ninety pieces. Even the limited editions books she so meticulously illustrated with her woodcuts are practically unobtainable.

Two books about her life have been published. Elena Poniatowska wrote a novel in 1978 based on Beloff's relationship with Rivera called Querido Diego, te abraza, Quiela, which was adapted for radio, then translated into English as Dear Diego, with Love, Quiela. The focus of Poniatowska's book was solidarity with Beloff and a social criticism of submission to masculine authority. She is not an objective writer but rather an advocate for the artist. Beloff's autobiography, En sus Memorias was published by UNAM in 1986.

Artistry

Her artwork was a fusion of European styles with Mexican imagery and colors, with her main artistic influences being Matisse, Cézanne and Picasso. Her painting shows the most influence from Cézanne, whose work she was introduced to by Rivera. This influence is most seen in still lifes, portraits and a number of landscapes. She avoided Mexican national symbols in her work, preferring to recreate the mundane with focus on details. One work which shows this influence is Avenida Hidalgo vista desde Bellas Artes(1949). Important portraits include Retrato de Susana Díaz de León (1948) which is that of a girl seated on a chair trying to reach the floor with her toes.