Jose de Rivera was a self-taught American sculptor who was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Jose de Rivera grew up and worked on a sugar plantation fixing farm machinery. de Rivera learned blacksmithing and machine work on the plantation, skills which he would later use to make art. Jose de Rivera dropped out of high school, but finished at a boarding school. Jose de Rivera moved to Chicago in 1924 at the age of twenty. He worked as a journeyman for seven years making tools, pipe fitting, and die-casting. He also studied drawing with muralist John W. Norton and worked for the Federal Arts Project of the WPA. In 1932, de Rivera made a trip to Europe and when he returned he knew that he wanted to sculpt. At the end of 1932, Jose de Rivera moved to Manhattan. Jose de Rivera also worked as a model maker for Sikorsky Aircraft. He served in the United States Army Air Corps in World War II. In 1946, Jose de Rivera had his first one-man show at the Mortimer Levitt Gallery in New York. In 1947-52, de Rivera's Black, yellow, red (1942) was exhibited in the 25-venue Painting toward architecture exhibition organized by the Miller Company Collection of Abstract Art. The artwork received a lot of media attention during the exhibition. Black, yellow, red was also featured in Henry-Russell Hitchcock's accompanying book Painting toward architecture (1948), with foreword by Alfred Barr of the Museum of Modern Art. The artwork was also the basis for the cover of a Miller Company heater design catalogue.
Many of de Rivera’s sculptures are steel or bronze bands twisted into three-dimensional shapes. His work is highly crafted, buffed and polished. Numerous works by de Rivera are mounted on rotating discs so that the development of the shape can be better seen. Jose de Rivera also showed at Grace Borgenicht during the 1980s. Jose de Rivera’s works are collected and exhibited by many important art museums, including: MoMA, Whitney, Tate Modern, Smithsonian, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan.