TPW Mexican Mural Art
Recent discoveries in the Amazon have revealed rock paintings that have been dated to 25,000 years ago. Pre-Colombian structures in Mexico have revealed traces of polychrome indicating that many of those structures were painted either in toto or in parts. When The Three began their mural painting in Mexico in the late twenties and early thirties it was not a new medium but a revival of an indigenous cultural artifact.
Each of the three ...Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros, and Jose Orozco had participated at some time in the Mexican Revolution of 1911 to 1921. They were personally acquainted with many of the people who later moved into positions of political prominence. Those contacts were vital for the revival of the mural tradition.
After the revolution the three made their pillages to Europe to study the old masters and to learn the new styles. Rivera especially created a wonderful body of work in the cubist manner. He also made his way to Italy, Rome, and studied the frescoes and the fresco techniques. Most of his murals, if not all of them, are in this material.
Siqueiros was more smitten with the modernist aesthetic, in the Baus Haus style in that he incorporated into his work all of the latest modern technology and materials. Likely he was the first muralist in Mexico to use a spray gun in his work. A variation of that technique is the number of present day teen aged boys with cans of Krylon.
The three were very political ...each was a card carrying member of the communist party ...and their murals celebrate and defend the common man’s present, his past and the hopes for his ...correct...political future. As a result they are not well represented in American Museums which are controlled by the corporate industry members on the boards of directors. Nelson Rockefeller was so enraged that the mural he had commissioned for Rockefeller Center in New York contained a portrait of Lenin, which Rivera refused to erase, that he had the mural removed and destroyed. Strange behavior for one of the most prolific art collectors in America!
When you do come upon their work you see immediately that it is indeed excellent. I have seen Rivera's murals in San Francisco and Siqueiros’ work on Olvera Street in Los Angeles. All three are great artists but I think Rivera specifically is one of the truly greats of the twentieth century. Although he considered himself a muralist I much prefer his paintings to the murals, which I find overburdened with verbal messaging. But of course I would...I am the worlds most completely apolitical person.
While there is much political discourse on the walls of present day Oaxaca ...in the form of graffiti or pasted up stenciled notices, the murals of the day are far more purely decorative now than those of The Three. Le Corbusier defined the decorative as the pleasant arrangement of familiar things. As is always the case, over time ...things change.
The Murals of Oaxaca.
This mural is very deceptive. It is on the second floor wall above an open parking space. This view is from the second floor walkway. The shrubs immediately below are about 8 to 10 feet tall and the foreground greenery is the top of trees on this side of the parking area. The mural is about 10 feet high and 30 or 35 feet wide. While it contains a number of common motifs in Mexican culture and despite being very artfully executed, I doubt that it was intended to be viewed as fine art. It is, in fact, a pleasant arrangement of familiar things.
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