Art by Diego Rivera

Rivera's 1933 mural for New York's Rockefeller Center, Man at the Crossroads, was physically destroyed by the building's owners before it was even finished, after Rivera refused to remove a portrait of Lenin he'd included in the design; he later repainted a version of it in Mexico City. He was married to Frida Kahlo, on and off, in a relationship both of them described as turbulent and both continued working through regardless. His largest and most enduring public works, including the Detroit Industry murals covering an entire courtyard of the Detroit Institute of Arts, treated factory labor and industrial machinery with the same monumental seriousness earlier painters reserved for saints and kings.