![Diego Rivera - Untitled (Composition Cubiste) [c.1916]](http://c5.staticflickr.com/6/5816/31155238556_bb1d2e81e7_b.jpg)
As a young artist, Diego Rivera travelled to Europe to continue the artistic training that he had begun at a young age in his native Mexico. He lived in Paris for over a decade where he was immersed in the world of young artists who had gathered from all over the globe, living with and marrying his first wife a Russian named Angeline Beloff in 1909. In 1914 Rivera met Pablo Picasso. Describing their first meeting, Rivera stated: “I went to Picasso’s studio intensely keyed up. My feelings were like those of the good Christian who expects to meet Our Lord, Jesus Christ…. Picasso asked me to stay and have lunch with him, after which he went back with me to my studio. There he asked to see everything I had done from the beginning to the end…. After I had shown Picasso these paintings, we had dinner together and stayed up practically the whole night talking. Our theme was Cubism - what it was trying to accomplish, what it had already done, and what future it had as a ‘new’ art form.”
[Sotheby’s, New York - Oil on canvas, 55 x 46.5 cm]