Mexican Muralism is an artistic movement that began around 1920.
It had its most prolific period from 1920-1940, featuring "The Big Three": José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
In the 1950s, the movement was evaluated, and more artists joined the scene.
Content Overview
The artistic movement and its starting point.
A brief introduction to the main Mexican muralist painters.
Muralist aesthetics: artistic process, maturation, and conversation with other latitudes.
The State's role in funding and promoting this art.
The most representative murals.
Recommended materials and places to visit.
Relevance to SPAN 44 Syllabus
Mexican Muralism engages with topics discussed in class.
It is closely tied to citizenship-making, nation-building, and the State's role in shaping ideas about national identity.
Diego Rivera's Perspective
Mexican muralism, for the first time in the history of monumental painting, ceased to use gods, kings, chiefs of state, heroic generals, etc., as central heroes.
Mexican mural painting made the masses the hero of monumental art, including men of the fields, factories, cities, and towns.
When a hero appears among the people, it is clearly as part of the people and as one of them.
Los Tres Grandes (The Big Three)
José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949)
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974)
Muralist Aesthetics
Artistic process, maturation, and conversation with other latitudes.
*Diego Rivera's *La guerrilla, (Zapatista Landscape)*, 1915, Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL) in Mexico City.
*José Clemente Orozco, “¿Me seguiréis? Hasta la ignominia”, (Will you follow me? Down to the disgrace), 1911 Cartoon, published in El Ahuizote [political magazine].
David Alfaro Siqueiros experimented with incorporating technology and mechanization into art.
The State's Role in Funding and Promoting Art
The State played a significant role in funding and promoting Mexican Muralism.
Octavio Paz's Quote
"The Muralist movement was first and foremost a discovery of Mexico's present and past."
Mexican mural painting was not a consequence of the revolutionary ideas of Marxism (although Rivera and Siqueiros professed that philosophy) but rather a result of a set of historical and personal circumstances: the Mexican Revolution.
Without the Revolution, these artists would not have expressed themselves, or their creations would have taken other forms; likewise, without the work of the muralists, the Revolution would not have been what it was.
Fresco vs. Mural
Fresco: Painting involves using water-soluble paints on wet plaster. It is done rapidly in water-based pigments on wet plaster on a wall or ceiling, allowing the colors to penetrate the plaster and become fixed as it dries.
Mural: A large painting on a wall, ceiling, or any other permanent surface. It is painted using various techniques, such as oil painting, tempera, acrylic painting, and painting with brushes, rollers, or airbrushes.
José Clemente Orozco's Murals
Hernán Cortés and "La Malinche", 1926, Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, part of the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso in Mexico City.
Catharsis, 1935, Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
Murals painted between 1936 and 1939 at Instituto Cultural Cabañas (built between 1805 and 1810) in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico.
Hombre de fuego (Man of Fire), 1939.
Diego Rivera's Murals
El hombre controlador del universo (Man at the Crossroads), 1934, Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, México City.
Palacio Nacional, México City: The West Wall: "From the Conquest to 1930," 1929-30, featuring:
Spanish Conquest
Mexican eagle
U.S. invasion
Juárez era
French Rule and Emperor Maximilian
Independence
Reform and Porfirian era and the Mexican Revolution
Emiliano Zapata
Benito Juárez
Miguel Hidalgo
South Wall: "Mexico Today and Tomorrow," 1935
David Alfaro Siqueiros' Murals
The New Democracy, 1944-1945, Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
The Torture of Cuauhtémoc, 1950-1951, Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico City.
From Porfirianism to the Revolution, 1957-1965, Museo Nacional de Historia, located within the Castillo de Chapultepec in Mexico City.
Where to Visit Mexican Muralism
Recommended materials and places to find more works from these artists.
Diego Rivera in the Bay Area
"My mural will picture the fusion between the great past of the Latin American lands, as it is deeply rooted in the soil, and the highly mechanical developments of the United States."
The Marriage of the Artistic Expression of the North and of the South on This Continent, also known as Pan American Unity, 1940, City College of San Francisco.
More murals to visit:
The Making of a Fresco at the San Francisco Art Institute
The Allegory of California at the City Club of San Francisco
Still Life & Blossoming Almond Trees in Stern Hall at UC Berkeley
Orozco in Los Angeles
Prometeo, (Prometheus), 1930, Pomona College Museum of Arte, California.
Siqueiros in Los Angeles
América Tropical [Siqueiros, 1932]
José Clemente Orozco
The life of Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) was filled with drama, adversity, and triumph.
Despite poverty, childhood rheumatic fever that damaged his heart, and an explosion in his youth that cost him his left hand, Orozco persisted in his wish to become an artist.