About
Before achieving fame for his mural paintings, Diego Rivera spent time in Paris, where he participated in the cubist movement and befriended a group of Russian émigrés. In 1916, he collaborated with his friend Ilya Ehrenburg, a Russian writer and journalist, on a small book entitled An Account of the Life of One Nadienka and of Certain Revelations She Had. Rivera produced seven drawings, including this one, used to illustrate a poem by Ehrenburg. Here he represents a domestic space perceived from multiple perspectives and animated with realistic details. The disjointed view extends to the figure of Nadienka, whose shadow suggests a hidden voluptuousness.