Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists - Part IX: David Siqueiros, Painter and Revolutionary

David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), who was to become the third member of the "Big Three Mexican Muralists", along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, came to Mexico City from Guanajuato with his father and siblings after the deaths of his mother and grandmother, when he was in primary school. In 1911, at age fifteen, he began his art training in the Academy of San Carlos, where Rivera had trained before going to Europe in 1907 and where Orozco, thirteen years his elder, was a student.

In the early 1920s, after the Mexican Revolution, Siqueiros took part with Rivera and Orozco in creating the first works of the Mexican Mural Movement in the National Preparatory School (former College of San Ildefonso). However, because of changes in the political environment, he did not finish the mural he began there and was not to leave his own visible artistic mark on the city until some twenty years later in the 1940's. (Note: some time after writing this post, we were able to see Siqueiros's first, partial work, See: David Siqueiros. Part III)

David Alfaro Siqueiros

Beginning with his art school studies in the mid-1910s and continuting through three-plus turbulent decades of Revolutions (Mexican and Russian), the Great Depression and two World Wars, until the end of his life in the 1970s, Siqueiros immersed himself in a personal political, cultural and geographic quest to discover and create for the modern world what he envisoned to be an art that was truly contemporary not only in its aesthetic, but also in its materials and techniques—an art, moreover, that communicated on grand scales in public spaces the core political issues of the epoch.

To tell the convoluted tale of his spiritual, political and artistic journey, we have written the page David Siqueiros: Twentieth Century Odysseus. In this post, we explore the art that he created in public spaces in Mexico City.

Palacio de Bellas Artes

In 1944, after passing through the Mexican Revolution, Paris, Italy, Guadalajara, Los Angeles, Uruguay, Argentina, Moscow, New York, the Spanish Civil War, an assassination attempt against Leon Trotsky and several stays in Mexico City's Lecumberri Prison, Siqueiros was back in Mexico City, out of prison and painting. The National Institute of Fine Arts commissioned him to create murals for Bellas Artes. Creating their own murals in the 1930s, Rivera and Orozco had preceded Siqueiros there by ten years.

Siqueiros' murals in Bellas Artes are direct, forceful examples of the sculptural, almost three- dimensional style he had developed over the years in smaller works. By foreshortening the subjects, the muralist makes them thrust forward, so they appear almost to attack the viewer. Their theme isn't the Mexican Revolution. It is World War II and the battle against Fascism which was at its height.

Victim of Fascism
Bellas Artes, 1944
The near-naked figure could as well be a slave from Roman times.

The New Democracy
Emerging from the volcano's fire, Liberty breaks her bonds.
She wears the red French Liberty Cap,
a symbol also used by Orozco.

"New Democracy" possibly refers to Mao Zedong's concept
that Chinese Communism would emerge directly 
from the working, peasant, small business and large capitalists,
skipping the Marxist stage of imperial capitalism and colonialism.

Six years late, in 1950, Siqueiros was invited back to place murals on the opposite side of the second balcony. Instead of a contemporary story of oppression, here he portrayed an historical, Mexican one: the Spanish Conquest of the Aztecs.

Cuauhtémoc, the last Aztec ruler, who briefly replaced Moctezuma II after he was killed, is tortured by the Spanish
to reveal any hidden gold. Moctezuma had already given most of his treasury to Cortés.
Cuauhtémoc is heroic in refusing to speak, while his companion pleads for mercy.

To execute these murals, Siqueiros used pryoxilin, a modern synthetic paint that enables surfaces to be built up, hence creating a sculpted effect. Rivera and Orozoco worked in the ancient technique of fresco, paint on wet plaster. Siqueiros criticized them for being old-fashioned.

University City

In 1952, the Mexican government, feeling more prosperous and stable after the War, decided to relocate the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) from its hodgepodge collection of Spanish colonial buildings in the Centro Histórico to a new campus, la Ciudad Universitaria, University City, to be built on a barren lava bed in the southern borough of Coyoacán.

The campus was to be a major embodiment of Mexico's drive to become a modern nation and, by the same token, a physical, visible expression of national pride and identity. Siqueiros and other Mexican artists were invited to create outdoor murals on the buildings to communicate those messages. He was assigned the Rectory, the main administration building at the center of the huge campus.

The People to the University, The University to the People

From the rear, el Pueblo, the People, offer the tools of learning to students, 

who, in turn, offer the results of their education to the People.

The mural is entitled The People to the University, The University to the People: For a National Neohumanist Culture of Universal Depth. Here Siqueiros carried the three-dimensional appearance of his earlier work into true, sculptural three dimensions. This technique was to be carried to its fullest expression in his final masterwork, the Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum. The universal humanistic theme of education—in place of a specifically revolutionary theme—also foreshadows that later work.

National Museum of History, Chapúltepec Castle

In 1957, Siqueiros was commissioned by the government to create a mural for the National Museum of History in Chapúltepec Castle. Titled From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz to the Revolution, Del porfirismo a la Revolución, this was his biggest mural yet, and the only one directly portraying the Revolution.

 

Del porfirismo a la Revolución, from the Porfiriato to the Revolution.
Díaz is surrounded by his scientificos, technocratic bureaucrats, 
and female tiples (sopranos), singer-entertainers of the day. 
His left foot rests atop the Constitution of 1857.

During the Cananea Consolidated Copper Company strike in Sonora, in 1906, rural police and hired Arizona rangers prepare to repress miners and strike leaders. Rafael Izabal, governor of Sonora, accompanied by the president of the U.S.-owned company, William C. Green, tries to seize the Mexican flag from Esteban Baca Calderón. Workers carry a victim of the repression. Other leaders of the Revolution appear, including Francisco Ibarra and Manuel M. Diéguez (moustache), under whom Siqueiros served during the Revolution.

The People in Arms include (second and third rows, from left) Francisco I. Madero (bald), Venustiano Carranza (full beard), Eufemio and Emiliano Zapata (red sombrero), Álvaro Obregón (moustache, cowboy hat) and Plutarco Calles (moustache, large sombrero). The country in flames is symbolized by the woman (red dress) on the right.

The Revolutionary, abruptly reining in his horse, symbolizes the end of the armed struggle.
One feels the horse's momentum is going to carry it beyond the mural's frame.

Row of Corpses symbolizes Revolution's cost in terms of human lives lost.
The first figure is Leopoldo Arenal, father of Siqueiros' third wife, Angélica, 
who was killed in 1913.

While this sequential mural starts out with a clear, revolutionary political position, it ends with a brutal realism that reminds us of Orozco's images in San Ildefonso.

Obra Interrupted

Siqueiros's work on the mural was interrupted by his political activities. In 1960 he was again arrested for openly criticizing Adolfo López Mateos, then President of Mexico, and for leading protests against the arrests of striking workers and teachers. He was imprisoned, yet another time, in Palacio de Lecumberri. While there, he continued to paint. 

Siqueiros painted this panel for a theater performance put on by prisoners in Palacio de Lecumberri Prison.
On display in Palacio de Lecumberri, now the National Archives.

During that imprisonment, he also made numerous sketches for a proposed mural project in the Hotel Casino de la Selva in Cuernavaca, Morelos. In the spring of 1964, Siqueiros was finally released and immediately resumed work on his suspended murals in Chapultepec Castle, which he completed in 1966.

Climactic Chapter of Revolutionary Art

Next we move to an aging David Siqueiros—militant Communist, who had fought in the Mexican Revolution and the Spanish Civil War, who had attempted to assassinate Leon Trotsky—to explore his final, grand project of the late 1960s.

Slated for a luxury resort hotel in Cuernavaca being built by a wealthy entrepreneur (quintessential capitalist who likely would have been quite comfortable in the pre-Revolutionary Porfiriato), the project was to end up being something even grander, more complex, and also quite challenging for the viewer to comprehend, very much like the artist himself. And it was to end up being realized in Mexico City as the Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum, which is subject of our next post.

See our other posts on the Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists:

Part I: Bellas Artes 

Part II: The Academy of San Carlos and Dr. Atl 

Part III: Secretariat of Education, José Vasconcelos and Diego Rivera 

Part IV: Secretariat of Education and Diego Rivera's Vision of Mexican Traditions 

Part V:  Secretariat of Education and Diego Rivera's Ballad of the Revolution 

Part VI: Diego Rivera at the College of San Ildefonso 

Part VII: José Clemente Orozco Comes to San Ildefonso 

Part VIII: College of San Ildefonso and José Clemente Orozco - Continued 

Part X: David Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum

Part XI: The Abelardo Rodríguez Market 

See also our short biography: David Siqueiros: Twentieth Century Odysseus

For the story of the Mexican Revolution, see: Mexican Revolution: Its Protagonists and Antagonists 

Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists - Part I: Bellas Artes, Where Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Siqueiros Meet

Bellas Artes, formally el Palacio de Bellas Artes, Palace of Fine Arts, sits at the western edge of Mexico City's Centro Histórico, along side the Alameda Central park and across the Eje Central, Central Axis, from Porfirio Díaz's Palacio de Correos, Post Office Palace, and not far from his other grand fin de siecle work, the Palacio de Comunicaciones, now the National Musuem of Art.

However, Bellas Artes is set apart from its sister edifices not only by its aesthetic, but also because its construction embodied a radical transition in Mexican history and culture. Begun by Díaz in 1904, construction was interrupted by the Mexican Revolution (1910-17) that deposed him from his thirty-some-year domination of Mexico. Construction was resumed in 1932 and completed in 1934. The exterior and interior architecture and furnishing record this dramatic political, historical and cultural transition.

Bellas Artes

The outside is full-blown Beaux Arts, an ornate elaboration of Neoclassisism defined by the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and popular in Western Europe and the Americas in the 19th and early 20th centuries (think Grand Central Station and the San Francisco Opera). It was designed by the Italian architect, Adamo Boari, who also designed the completely different Renaissance Revival Palacio de Correos across the street. Initially called the National Theater, this was Díaz's last effort to make Mexico City into a New World Paris of the turn of the century.

Four muses of performing arts

by Italian Leonardo Bistolfi

                   

An angel plays music to revive the human spirit

To these grand classical images are added small recollections of pre-Hispanic, Mesoamerican culture. 

Aztec Eagle Warrior
and Mexican serpent
over door to the side of the main one

Aztec Jaguar Warrior

  

The glass and ceramic-covered dome, with its flowing lines designed by Hungarian architect Géza Maróti, is Art Nouveau.

Bellas Artes dome
Photo taken from Torre Latinoamericana

Bellas Artes faces Madero Street, next to the Alameda Central,
whose current design is also from the Porfiriato period.
Photo taken from Torre Latinoamericana

Crossing an Historic and Aesthetic Threshold

Walking inside, you cross a threshold into the first clear aesthetic expression of 20th century moderism, Art Deco, with its intense, spare geometry. You may also think you have entered a Mexican version of Rockefeller Center. 

The Grand, Central Dome

Side Dome and Central Dome

                      

Side Dome

                       

Doors to Main Theater

Here, too, are echos of Mexico's Mesoamerican roots.

Art Deco version of Cha'ac,
Mayan God of Waters

Tlaloc,
Aztec God of Waters

Stylized Mask

               

Designed by Mexican architect Federico Mariscal, the ancient and the modern go together, perhaps because of their equally strong geometries,                                

Iconography of a Revolution and Its Aftermath

Looking up from the main lobby to the two balconies above, you get your first glimpses of yet another powerful aesthetic, one shaped by the Mexican Revolution and its consequences. Here, installed on the upper balcony, we will be confronted by the powerful, very modern works of Mexico's iconic muralists: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

El Hombre En El Cruce de Caminos (Man at the Crossroads)
Center: Modern Man, with the potential benefits of Science
Left: the end of Western capitalism with the First World War
Right: Workers of the World, called to Revolution to overturn the past
Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera (1886-1957): Revolutionary Idealism

Diego Rivera painted an initial version of El Hombre En El Cruce de Caminos (Man at the Crossroads), in 1933, in that other Art Deco palace, Rockefeller Center, under a commission by none other than John D. himself. However, Rivera, a Communist, included portraits of Marx and Lenin, understandably not to his patron's taste, so Rockefeller had the mural destroyed. In 1934, in Bellas Artes, at the bequest of the Post-Revolutionary, rather socialist government of President Lázaro Cárdenas, Rivera recreated it.

Leon Trotsky (glasses) calls Workers to the 4th International,
in opposition to Stalin
Friedrich Engles and Karl Marx are to the right

Lenin brings together the working class of all races

Post-Revolutionary Irony: Caricaturing Past and Present, Self and Others

Rivera's other contribution in Bellas Artes  — four-panel series he called Carnaval de la vida mexicana, Carnival of Mexican Life — is in a completely different style, Mexican caricature with its characteristic irony. The series was commissioned in 1936 by Alberto Pani, for his Hotel Reforma, one of the first modern hotels in Mexico City and one designed to attract U.S. and European tourists.

The paintings' blatant political content and unflattering portrayal of tourists led Pani to have it "touched up". When Rivera found out, there was an altercation between the two. Rivera won a lawsuit and restored the work, but Pani then put it into storage. The panels were finally sold to the government in 1963 and installed in Bellas Artes.

La Dictadura, The Dictatorship,
portrays a dictator with features of
Plutarco Calles, President 1924-28,
and "Jefe Maximo", "Head Boss" 1928-34.
He holds a flag that combines element of the U.S., Nazi and Japanese flags.
A "pig" policeman robs the woman he is dancing with.
A "charro", "cowboy", i.e., a government collaborator,
controls rebellious "animal" figures.

Danza de la Huichilobos
Modeled after the Carnaval of Huejotzingo in the state of Puebla.
"La Gran Victoria" is an allusion to the Mexican Army's defeat of the French
in the first Battle of Puebla, May 5, 1862, re-enacted in the Carnaval.
The French returned a year later, defeated the Mexicans and seized Mexico City

Leyenda de Agustín Lorenzo portrays a folk hero "Robin Hood" bandit
who attacked the French during their Intervention.
His bravado is also re-enacted in the Carnaval of Huejotzingo

México folklórico and turístico
A very blond, thin "norteamericana" looks on
while two bourgeois jackasses and a dog rule over indigenous chinelos dancers,
whose Moorish-style costumes, in turn, mock the Spanish conquerors.
Ever-present Death sits to the side.

One can see why these paintings didn't go over with a hotel owner seeking U.S. clientele. It's also clear that we are no longer in the age of the Porfiriato (1876-1911), with its love of 19th century, bourgeois, "classical" European refinement, so clearly portrayed in the exterior of Bellas Artes.

But Rivera's symbolic modernist statements are understated compared to that of his fellow muralist, José Clemete Orozco.

José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949):  Modernity In Your Face

Katharsis
1934-35

Katharsis, named so by a Mexican art critic, painted in situ in 1934-35, is an overwhelming confrontation with the chaos of the revolutions and wars of the early 20th century. Two prostitutes, one young, one old, lie in the foreground, beneath two men, one clothed, bald, old, the other naked and perhaps young, struggling amidst the machinery of modern war. At upper left, the masses raise their fists in protest. Above it all, the consuming flames of destruction and, perhaps, catharsis. Certainly not an heroic view of the Mexican Revolution or the war to end all wars. It is the 20th century in your face.

We will see more of Orozco's view of modernity when we visit the Antiguo Colegio San Ildefonso. 

David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974): A Mexican Looks at World War II

The third, and youngest, member of the triumvirate of Mexican muralists is David Alfaro Siqueiros. His sculpted, almost three-dimensional murals deliver another powerful mix of hyper-realism and symbolism.

Víctimas de la guerra
Victims of War
1944

Víctima del facismo
Victim of Fascism
1944

                             

Nueva democracia
New Democracy
1944

While these murals are a response to the Second World War, with its violence and hopes, Siqueiros painted a more direct take on the Revolution in Chapúltepec Castle, an edifice which played many roles in Mexican History and now, appropriately, is the National History Museum. We will return there soon. We will also visit the artist's last work, the monumental Sigueiros Cultural Polyforum, an entire building that is, itself, an abstract sculpture covered with murals outside and in. It was created in the last half of the 1960s, in Benito Juárez Delegación (borough) south of the city center.

Rufino Tamayo (1899-1991): Synthesis via Abstraction

Descending from the second to the first balcony, we are provided some relief from the intensity of the conflicts communicated in the works of the "Great Three". On the lower level, we meet RufinoTamayo.

Nacimiento de la Nacionalidad, The Birth of Nationality
1952
Upper left: Spanish conquistador with his sword.
Below him, the gray-green arc of the feathered serpent god,
Quetzalcóatl, with his head rising to the upper right.
Below him, the ruins of indigenous culture
Bottom, right: The half white, half brown head of a mestizo,
a mixed race, baby being born

México de hoy, Mexico of Today
1953
Abstract representation of Mexicans' synthesis, through fire,
of their indigenous past and industrialized present

Tamayo's murals are not only artistically abstract; they are also conceptual abstractions of the historic development of Mexico: the contrasting roots of its indigenous civilizations and the Spanish Conquest, and the mestizaje, the mixing of the two cultures. It is a classic example of the dynamics of thesis, antithesis and final synthesis of Hegel and Marx. 

The murals portray the ideological hope of the Revolution, or at least of its intellectual spokesmen such as José Vasconcelos (1882-1959) and his vision of Mexican history as producing the "Cosmic Race," the synthesis of all races. We will meet Vasconcelos when we visit the Secretariat of Public Education, which he founded, and where he had Diego Rivera create a panoramic series of murals portraying Mexican culture and the Revolution. 

Walking Through a Revolution

So we come to the end of our perambulation through Bellas Artes. Literally, moving from outside to inside, from top to bottom, it has been a walk from the Porfiriato epoch at the end of the 19th century, across the violent eruptions of the Mexican Revolution in the second decade of the 20th century, to some of the artistic, cultural and political perspectives of modern Post-Revoultionary Mexico. Quite a tour! Quite an edifice!

See also: Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists

Part II: The Academy of San Carlos and Dr. Atl 

Part III: Secretariat of Education, José Vasconcelos and Diego Rivera 

Part IV: Secretariat of Education and Diego Rivera's Vision of Mexican Traditions 

Part V:  Secretariat of Education and Diego Rivera's Ballad of the Revolution 

Part VI: Diego Rivera at the College of San Ildefonso 

Part VII: José Clemente Orozco Comes to San Ildefonso 

Part VIII: College of San Ildefonso and José Clemente Orozco - Continued

Part IX: David Siqueiros, Painter and Revolutionary 

Part X: David Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum

Part XI: The Abelardo Rodríguez Market

For the background of the Mexican Revoluion, see:

Mexican Revolution: Its Protagonists and Antagonists