Diego Rivera was living in Paris at the same time as Adolfo Best Maugard, who had been in Europe, at the behest of the Ministry of Education and Fine Arts, since 1912 for the purpose of making copies of Mexican archeological
artifacts that were on exhibition in European museums. Rivera executed this metaphorically charged portrait, whose two planes display a strong stylistic contrast with each other, in 1913. The static, elongated,
elegantly dressed protagonist stands out in the foreground, standing on a sort of red-railed balcony that distances him from, and raises him above the urban scene in the background i.e. the modern Paris of the time,
with a train, factories whose chimneys billow forth clouds of smoke that give an impression of movement, urban buildings depicted in a Cubist style, a futuristically rapid train and, behind everything, a wheel of
fortune spinning so dizzily that its spokes are blurred. The aforesaid wheel of fortune, reminiscent of the one built for the 1900 Paris Universal Exhibition, symbolizes technological progress. Rivera succeeded
in connecting these two spaces, depicted in different styles, by using perspective to provide a visual link between the protagonist's forefinger and the center of the wheel of fortune, suggesting that man, from
a higher plane and acting as a demiurge, directs and promotes progress.
Portrait of Adolfo Best Maugard, (a.k.a. Young Man on the Balcony), was shown at the Paris Salon des Indépendents in 1913, and made
known to Mexicans, via a photograph in the El Universal Ilustrado magazine, on the 24th of May, 1918. Having belonged to a private collection, this piece has formed part of the MUNAL collection since 1983, thanks
to a generous donation in the will of Mr. Arturo Arnáiz y Freg.
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