Angelina Beloff

Angelina Beloff (born Angelina Petrovna Belova; Russian: Ангелина Петровна Белова; 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, though her contacts with various Mexican artists, she was sponsored to live in 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 Tzarist 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.