House on the Bridge

About the Book

“House on the Bridge...Ten Turbulent Years with Diego Rivera” is the story of Diego Rivera’s first wife, Angeline Beloff, a painter and engraver from pre-revolutionary St. Petersburg, and her relationship with the well known muralist in Belle Époque Paris.

These were the years when he was developing his skills in Europe before returning to Mexico to depict his country’s history in murals. They lived and struggled with other artists—Pablo Picasso, Amadeo Modigliani, Maria Blanchard, Apollinaire-- and others in Montparnasse before, during and after WWI.

They met in the medieval town of Bruges, traveled to London, visited museums, made trips to Spain and eventually married in Dieppe in 1911. He was in Mexico City at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution and claimed to have smuggled explosives in his paint box to assassinate Diaz, while she was in St. Petersburg during Bloody Sunday and the unrest leading up to the Russian Revolution.

During their years in Paris, they watched their world change from Belle Époque to the horrors of world war where they were forced to sleep in subways by night and stand in long lines searching for coal to keep warm in winter. Many times they ate at canteens set up specifically to feed artists.

Living with him was painful and exciting and their circle of friends was talented, mad and eventually successful. She loved him unconditionally during their life in Paris and probably for the rest of her life.

About the Author

Sharon Upp of Laguna Niguel, California has written for many years, working in Bogota, Colombia as the National Coordinator of English, in Scottsdale, Arizona as the editor of a foreign trade magazine, writer of a business astrology column in Orange County, California and has stories published in “Sacred Waters” and “Sacred Fire” by Maril Crabtree.

She is an ordained minister of the Living Essence Foundation; taught “A Course in Miracles” for over a decade; served on the Alliance for Spiritual Community for 13 years in Orange County and has taught/ guided meditations for 15 years. She has been a Vedantist for many years and for a time hosted Bhagavad-Gita classes in her home.

She has a degree in Spanish Literature and Latin American Studies from Arizona State University and has attended language classes in Paris. She studied two semesters of Pre-Columbian history and art at the Universidad Ibero Americana in Mexico D.F. Sharon Upp currently resides in Portland, Oregon and appreciates the way the community supports local bookstores.