Rina Lazo

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Guatemalan-Mexican painter, who began her career in mural painting with Diego Rivera as his assistant. She worked with him from 1947 until his death in 1957 on projects both in Mexico and Guatemala. Thereafter she remained an active painter, better known for her mural works than canvases although the latter have been exhibited in Mexico and other countries making her one of Guatemala's better known artists. She was a member of the Mexican muralism movement and while she criticized modern artists as too commercial and not committed to social causes, she believed muralism would revive in Mexico because of its history. Her early artistic, social and political life was strongly tied with that of her teachers Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, and she became a militant supporter of the Mexican Communist Party. Lazo married Mexican artist Arturo Garcia Bustos in 1949. Their home was said to be a residence of La Malinche, and was later a monastery, prison, and hospital. In 2006, after living there for more than forty years, they opened part of the ground floor to house the Galería de la Casa Colorada. Their only daughter, Rina García Lazo, is an architect specializing in the restoration of monuments. Abel Santiago wrote the biography, Rina Lazo: Sabiduría de Manos, published in 2007. Arturo García Bustos died on 7 April 2017 at age 90. Lazo died in Mexico City on 1 November 2019 at the age of 96. Link to Wikipedia biography