Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists - Part VII: José Clemente Orozco Comes to San Ildefonso

José Clemente Orozco,
by David Siqueiros,
Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum,
Delegación Benito Juárez,
Mexico City

Secretary of Public Education José Vasconcelos had put Rivera to work creating murals in the Secretariat of Education, so he hired artist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) to add more murals in the Preparatory School. Orozco was forty years old.

Born in the western state of Jalisco, his family had moved to Mexico City in 1890, when he was seven. He was enrolled in the elementary school of the Teachers College in the Centro Histórico. On his way to school, Orozco recounts in his Autobiography, he would pass the printing shop where José Guadalupe Posada (February 2, 1852 – January 20, 1913) worked as an engraver, illustrating books and newspaper stories.

José Guadalupe Posada,
by David Siqueiros,
Siqueiros Cultural Polyforum,
Delegación Benito Juárez,
Mexico City

Orozco was fascinated. He felt

"impelled to cover paper with my earliest figures; this was my awakening to the art of painting."

At some point while still attending elementary school, he enrolled in evening classes at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts. Diego Rivera, who was three years younger, also started studying at the Academy in 1896, at age 10.

In 1897, at age fourteen, Orozco's father sent him to the San Jacinto School of Agriculture, just outside the city. Completing the three-year course, in 1900 Orozco enrolled in the National Preparatory School, planning to study architecture. But his passion for painting overtook him and he left to enroll in San Carlos. His father had died, so he supported himself working as a draftsman for architects and newpapers.

In 1911, when Francisco Madero and others had overthrown Porfirio Díaz, Orozco, now twenty-eight, got work through a journalist friend as a cartoonist with an opposition newpaper. As for taking sides in the Revolution, Orozco wrote later in his Autobiography:

"I might equally well have gone to work for a government paper instead of the opposition. No artist has, or ever has had, political convictions of any sort. Those who profess to have them are not artists."

He joined the student strike at the Academy, seeking to throw out the director and the Neoclassic curriculum. When Alfredo Ramos Martínez became director of the re-opened Academy and led students to paint plein air, in the open air, at a house he rented in the then rural village of Santa Anita Ixtapalapa (now part of the Mexico City borough of that name), Orozco initially went along. But he soon found the focus on French Impressionism too precious for his taste. Instead of their

"pretty landscapes with the requisite violets and Nile greens, I preferred black and the colors exiled from Impressionist palettes. I painted the pestilent shadows of closed rooms, and instead of the Indian male, drunken ladies and gentlemen."

He left and rented his own studio in thc City Center.

By his own account, he took no part in the various phases of the Revolution, despite U.S. newspaper accounts to the contrary. He felt Madero's presidency was "a half revolution, sheer confusion and senseless." Huerta was

"no doubt a monster, but no different from others who fill the pages of history."

After Huerta's defeat in October of 1914, the forces of Villa and Zapata on one side and Carranza on the other failed to agree on a new government at the Convention of Aguascalientes. Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata then directed their armies at Carranza's. In November, Carranza retreated to the state of Veracruz. Dr. Atl, the students' mentor at the Academy, convinced many of them to join him and Carranza. Orozco went with him to the city of Orizaba, helped set up printing presses and drew political cartoons against Villa and Zapata. And witnessed the horrors of war:

"The world was torn apart around us. Troop convoys passed through on their way to slaughter. Trains were blown up. Wretched Zapatista peasants who had fallen prisoner were summarily shot down. People grew used to killing, to the most pitiless egotism, to the glutting of sensibilities, to naked bestiality.

"In the world of politics, it was the same, war without quarter, struggle for power and wealth. Factions and subfactions were past counting; the thirst for vengeance insatiable. And underneath it all, subterranean intrigues went on between the friends of today and the enemies of tomorrow, resolved, when the time came, upon mutual extermination. Farce, drama, barbarity. Buffoons and dwarfs, trailing along after the gentleman of the noose and dagger, in conference with smiling procuresses."

In 1917, after Carranza had defeated Villa and Zapata and become president, and some stability returned to Mexico, Orozco, now thirty-four, seeing no future for himself in Mexico, left for the United States. Carrying some of his rolled-up paintings with him, he was inspected by U.S. Customs Officials at the border in Laredo, Texas. They destroyed sixty of his paintings because they were seen as "immoral," even though, Orozco comments, "there were no nudes."

Orozco went on to San Francisco, where acquaintances took him in and he survived with small painting and printing jobs. He later moved on to New York City, where he loved Harlem and Coney Island.

In 1922, seeing that "the table was set for mural painting," Orozco returned to Mexico. In 1923, he was hired by José Vasconcelos to paint murals in the National Preparatory School, the former Jesuit Colegio de San Ildefonso.

Inner patio of San Ildefonso
Some of Orozco's murals
can be glimpsed in the passageway on the right
Photo: Rebecca Brundage Clarkin

Orozco's first painting seems to be a continuation of both the classic imagery and idealized, hopeful theme of Rivera's Creation.

Maternidad
Maternity

Maternidad is an ethereal, semi-modern reworking of a Renaissance or even Baroque-style portrayal of a Madona and her child, now blond and naked, surrounded by hovering angelic figures. Striking both in its idealization and boldness, it is at the same time strange, as if from the Art Nouveau end of the 19th century rather than the third decade of the 20th. This and other murals Orozco painted in the Preparatory School at the time were strongly criticized, including by Catholics who saw them as blasphemous. Orozco responded by destroying all but this mural and quitting the job.

An Artistic Revolution in Style and Vision

At the end of 1924, Plutarco Elías Calles became president and announced several populist projects to fulfill the Revolutionary desires of peasant farmers for land and urban laborers for the workers' rights that had been incorporated into the Constitution of 1917. Orozco decided to return to San Ildefonso in 1926 and began painting again, restoring some of his destroyed murals, but now he worked in a starkly modern style, presenting a startling perspective on the events that, a decade before, had devastated the country.

Next to Maternidad he painted a series of murals on the Mexican Revolution very different from the optimistic, idealized ones Rivera was realizing nearby in the Secretariat of Education. In them, Orozco gave visual life to his autobiographical observations on the brutality and senselessness of the Revolution.

La Trinchera
The Trench

The vital, velvet rich reds and warm golds of Maternidad are replaced with somber greys, tans and black and a touch of blood red in the background, the colors that he has told us he loved. We are confronted with three revolutionary soldiers falling in battle. Two topple, arms extended as if crucified, against hard, harsh rock. The third doubles over on his knees, covering his eyes from the scene.  The contrast with Rivera's heroic Trinchera, in his Ballad of the Revolution, could not be more striking.

Diego Rivera's En la Trinchera
Secretariat of Public Education

Further along the colonnade of the planta baja, the ground floor, we encounter a more symbolic but almost as disturbing image of the Revolution.

La trinidad revolucionaria
The Revolutionary Trinity

This very non-Christian Trinity is composed of a central figure holding a rifle but blinded by the Red Cap of Liberty that had been the symbol of the French Revolution. The left-hand figure covers his eyes, similar to the third figure in La Trinchera. The right-hand figure has had his hands cut off. Behind him is a small, paradoxical slice of the azure Mexican sky.

Alongside this critical, to say the least, even sardonic and despondent view of the Revolution, Orozco places his view of the bourgeois upper-class.

El banquete de los ricos
Banquet of the Rich

Here Orozco is much more in synch with Rivera's view of wealthy capitalists.

La Orgia-La Noche de los Ricos
The Orgy-The Night of the Rich
Diego Rivera
Secretariat of Education

However, the style of Rivera's "Orgy" and the figures within it seem tame, aloof, stilted compared to Orozco's over-the-top painting style and his corpulent, drunken, contemptuous diners.

With this stark introduction to both sides of the early 20th century's economic and political divides, we start up the stairs to the two upper floors, wondering what more Orozco has in store for us.

Up the Stairs and Backward in Time

Reaching the landing halfway up to el primer piso, the first upper floor, we turn to continue ascending, but become aware of a powerful presence looming over our head.

Cortés y Malinche

Hernán Cortés, the Conquistador, and Malinche, the indigenous Nahua woman given to him by her Maya master as a peace offering and who became his translator, sit naked and rigidly upright above us. Cortés stares into the distance, as if his mind is on other things, other places. Malinche drops her gaze. While they hold right hands, Cortés uses his left to block Malinche from moving forward. Below them, outside this photo (it was too dark to capture), lies the small, naked body of an indigenous man or youth, face down. Cortés´ right foot rests on the person's legs. His left foot is held poised in the air, as if about to stomp on the prostrate figure.

Artistically and emotionally, it is the simplest, most unadorned and powerful representation we have seen of the contrasts, clash, devastation and synthesis that was the Spanish Conquest of what is today called Mexico.

On the side walls leading up the stairs, Orozco continues with this potent, truly shocking theme.

Los Franciscanos
The Franciscans

It was Cortés himself who, after his defeat of the Aztecs and demolition of their capital, Tenochtitlán, petitioned the young King Charles I, who was also Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, to send friars, members of religious orders, monks, not priests of the regular "secular" church, i.e. the church in the everyday world, to evangelize the indigenous peoples of the lands he was now subduing. Charles sent Franciscans. (See our post: The Spiritual Conquest: The Franciscans - Where It All Began.)

They arrived barefoot and dressed in near rags, manifesting their vows of humility and poverty. While they strove to convert the "heathen", saving them from their violent "pagan" gods, they also became known for seeking to defend them from the worst depredations of the conquistadores and peninsulares, members of the Spanish ruling class who came to manage the new realm and extract its natural wealth using indigenous labor.   

Sobered by this confrontation with Mexico's roots exposed, we continue up the stairs, wondering even more how Orozco will unsettle us with the range and power both of his themes and his technique.

See more 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 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 

Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists - Part III: José Vasconcelos and Diego Rivera in the Secretariat of Education

A Vision of Free, Secular Public Education

In 1920, as the power struggles between leaders of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1917) were still playing themselves out, General Álvaro Obregón, who had defeated Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata on behalf of Venustiano Caranza, overthrew his former Jefe, boss, and became President.

One of his first acts was to create the Secretariat of Public Education (SEP) and select José Vasconselos (1882-1959), lawyer, amateur philosopher and staunch supporter of the Revolution's ideals, to head the new institution.

The Secretariat took as its headquarters the former convent of Santa María de la Encarnación del Divino Verbo (St. Mary of the Incarnation of the Divine Word). Built in the 1640's, it was one of the largest and richest convents in Spanish Colonial Mexico City (nuns, who had to be pure-blooded Spanish, had their own apartments and servants). During the Era of Reforms led by President Benito Juárez in the 1850s and 60s, such Church properties were nationalized and put to secular uses. The convent was used for various government purposes. It sits just behind the Metropolitan Cathedral in the Centro Histórico. 

Secretariat of Public Education
corner of República de Argentina and San Ildefonso Streets

When Vasconcelos took over the edifice, he had it renovated in Neoclassic style to express the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment (think Washington, D.C.). He saw its two huge, open interior patios as spaces to display his vision of a post-Revolution Mexican identity, synthesizing its indigenous past with elements of its Spanish culture and modern, secular life through empirically based, humanistic, free public education.

To execute this huge artistic and cultural project, Vasconcelos encouraged a pre-Revolution acquaintance, Diego Rivera, to return from Europe. Throughout the period of the Revolution, Rivera had been in Europe studying and painting with Impressionist and modern masters. At age thirty-seven, Rivera agreed to return to Mexico City. From 1923 to 1928 Rivera painted murals on virtually every wall of every floor of the two patios.

Front patio, which Rivera designated The Patio of Labor

The building has three floors, in Spanish la planta baja (ground floor) and primer y segundo pisos (first and second floors). On the ground floor of the front or east patio, Rivera mostly painted murals portraying Mexican workers or laborers. He therefore named the patio el Patio del Trabajo, The Patio of Labor. It is here that our tour begins. We will see that it presents more than workers. It initiates us to the ideals of the Mexican Revolution.

Diego Rivera self-portrait while in Europe
Dolores Olmedo Museum,
Delegación Xochimilco,
Mexico City

"Land and Liberty"

One dynamic driving the Revolution—represented in the rural-based forces of Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Pancho" Villa—was the peasants' demand to be freed from virtual slavery as peons on the haciendas. During the Colonial Period, the King of Spain granted these large estates to his soldiers. The peasants' Revolutionary demand was that the land—theirs as indigenous inhabitants—be returned to them.

Liberation of the Péon

Distribution of the Land
A government official, moreno, dark-skinned, hence of indigenous origins, oversees
light-skinned, hence criollo (of pure-blooded Spanish descent) hacendados, landowners, as they sign over land titles
to an ejido, a community of indigenous moreno campesinos, peasant farmers.

An idealized, ladino (middle class, Europeanized) Emiliano Zapata looks on as land is distributed.
In fact, Zapata was assassinated by agents of victorious President Venustiano Caranza in April 1919.

Along with the demand for land went the desire for economic and political liberty. Central to that liberty was being able to read and write in order to participate as equals in business dealings and in organized political activity. 

Educating rural, poor, often indigenous campesinos, peasant farmers, was a truly revolutionary idea. President Benito Juárez, himself indigenous, had the goal of establishing secular (non-Catholic), free public education during the brief Era of Reform (1856-76). However, his administration was fragmented by two periods of civil war initiated by conservative forces, the War of Reform (1857-60) and the French Intervention (1862-67).

In 1868, Juárez established the National Preparatory (High) School in the former Jesuit Colegio de San Ildefonso, just down the street from Santa María de la Encarnación. However, with the return of domination by conservative, wealthy hacendados, owners of haciendas, during the reign of President Porfirio Díaz (1876-1911), any thought of educating rural people was banished. 

The Rural Teacher
instructs all ages, under the watchful eye of a Revolutionay soldier

Thus, central to the vision of the rural revolution of Zapata and Villa was education of the campesinos. To this end, Vasconcelos established Rural Normal Schools, whose mission was to train indigenous youth from rural pueblos to become teachers. In turn, they would return as teachers to their villages to educate their people. The history and vicissitudes of these Rural Normal Schools reflect the ongoing conflicts between conservative oligarchic and populist forces in Mexico up to the present day.

The Weight of Labor

Rivera's portrayals of various groups of laborers do not contain explicit political messages. However, his rendering of their bodies, with their postures and evident weight, together with the color tones he chose, communicates the physical and emotional tenor of their lives.

Entrance to the mine

Exit from the Mine
raised arms of worker being searched as he leaves
reflect a crucifixion

The Sugar Mill
Here the rhythm of heavy physical work is conveyed

The  Hacienda Foreman
postures say it all

The Dyers
slow rhythms of repetitive work

Campesinas, Rural Women
stoic stillness,
each pair a kind of pyramid

The Embrace,
between urban day laborer and day farm worker
An explicit revolutionary message

The dayworkers of the fields and of the city,
both disinherited from liberty,
make stronger the tie
that unites them in the struggle and in pain
and the fecund earth gives flower to an embrace of force and love.
Now after this embrace they will not pay tributes or favors,
and the field and the machine will give all their fruits to all of you.
M. Gutierrez (Manuel Gutierrez, governor of Veracruz and liberal politician during the Era of Reform)

And on all this, Rivera put his own stamp.

Rivera signed each mural accompanied with a symbol: the hammer of the laborer and the sickle of the farmworker. The emblem of Communism, which sought the embrace of workers from the city and the countryside. We will see touches of this perspective when we tour Rivera's murals in the second patio portraying traditional festivals, which he named the Patio of the Fiestas. We will encounter it in full force when we reach the top floor of this edifice where a lawyer and a painter sought to realize a Revolutionary vision.

See more on the Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists:

• Part I: Bellas Artes;
• Part II: The Academy of San Carlos and Dr. Atl;
• 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 background on Mexican Revoluion, see:

• Mexican Revolution: Its Protagonists and Antagonists.

See also: Diego Rivera: European Apprenticeship & Mexican Homecoming from my wife's, Jenny's Journal of Mexican Culture.

Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists - Part II | The Genesis of the Mexican Mural Movement: The San Carlos Academy of Art and Dr. Atl

National Academy of San Carlos

Intertwined with the Mexican Revolution was a revolution in Mexican Art, which began within the walls of another colonial building in the heart of the Centro Histórico. It was here that a teacher of painting and some students came together and provided the fuel and fire for what was to become the Mexican Mural Movement when the military Revolution finally came to an end.

Royal Spanish Foundation and Neoclassic Aesthetic

The Academy of San Carlos was initially founded in 1781 under the name of the School of Engraving. Renamed many times in the intervening years, it remains known as the Academy of San Carlos. The School of Engraving started out in a building that had been the mint, and would later become the modern-day National Museum of Cultures. Ten years later, it was moved to the former Amor de Dios (Love of God) Hospital, where it remains to this day. The original hospital building was remodeled in Neoclasssic style. The street on which it is located was renamed from Amor de Dios Street to Academia Street in its honor.

The Academy was originally sponsored by the Spanish Crown and a number of private patrons. It was the first major art institution in the Americas. The new school promoted Neoclassicism, focusing on Greek and Roman art and architecture and advocating European-style training of its artists. To this end, plaster casts of classic Greek and Roman statues were brought to Mexico from Europe for students to study.

Interior patio

In the early 19th century, the Academy was closed for a short time due to the Mexican War of Independence. When it reopened, it was renamed the National Academy of San Carlos and enjoyed the new government's preference for Neoclassicism, as it considered the Baroque style reminiscent of colonialism. The academy continued to advocate classic, European-style training of its artists up until the Mexican Revolution. (Wikipedia)

New Aesthetic Arrives with the Twentieth Century

As the 19th century was nearing its end, new currents began to enter the school. In 1897, Gerardo Murillo Cornado (October 3, 1875 – August 15, 1964), a twenty-two year old student at the Academy, was granted a scholarship by President Porfirio Díaz to travel to Europe to study painting. He had broad, humanistic interests and obtained a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Rome. He traveled to Paris to study art. He also became involved in the anarcho-syndicalist (union) movement and the Italian Socialist Party. He apparently met both Lenin and Mussolini. In 1902, he took the name "Dr. Atl"—"water" in the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs.

Gerardo Murillo Cornado, Dr. Atl.
Photo in the Diego Rivera House Museum
Colonia San Ángel.

Returning to Mexico in 1904, Atl became a teacher at San Carlos. Shortly afterwards, he issued a manifesto calling for the development of a monumental public art movement sponsored by the government and linked to the lives and interests of the Mexican people. He advocated painting from real life and nature and using paints made from native materials, rather than following the classical training of San Carlos, which involved copying European classic paintings and sculpture.

José Clemente Orozco, an evening student in his early twenties, and other students began to experiment, breaking with the strict classical training of the Academy. In his autobiography, Orozco recalls:

"In these night classes of apprentice painters, the first signs of revolution appeared in Mexican Art. The Mexican had been a poor colonial servant, incapable of creating or thinking for himself. Everything had to be imported ready made from European centers, for we were an inferior and degenerate race. ...It was inconceivable that a Mexican should dream of vying with the world abroad... 

"In the night classes in the Academy, as we listened to the fervent voice of that agitator, Dr. Atl, we began to suspect that the whole colonial situation was nothing but a swindle foisted upon us... We, too, had a character that was quite the equal of any other. We could learn what the ancients and the foreigners had to teach us, but we could do as much as they, or more. It was not pride but self-confidence that moved us to this belief, a sense of our own being and our destiny.  

"I set out to explore the most wretched of the city's barrios. On every canvas there began to appear, bit by bit, like a dawn, the Mexican landscape and familiar forms and colors. It was only a first and still timid step toward liberation from foreign tyranny, but behind it there was throrough preparation and rigorous training." (Autobiography of Orozco)

Diego Rivera, in his late teens, was also a student at the time. In 1907, at age twenty-one, he left for Europe with a scholarship to study art. He was to remain there until 1922.

As Mexican Revolution Erupts, Academy Undergoes Its Own Revolution

The year 1910 was the 100th Anniversary of the start of the Mexican War of Independence. As part of the celebrations planned by President Porfirio Díaz, an Exposition of Contemporary Spanish Painting was organized, to be shown in a special pavillion erected on the Alameda.

The students of the Academy protested that, since it was a celebration of Mexican independence from Spain, Mexican art should be represented. Dr. Atl negotiated with the government and they were given a small grant to put on an exhibit in the Academy. Orozco was one of some fifty artists to exhibit their work. It was a huge popular success.

Dr. Atl proposed that the young artists form their own organization, the Artistic Center, which would seek to gain access to government buildings where they could paint murals on the walls. They were given permission to start in the National Preparatory School. They erected scaffolding, but did not get the chance to begin. In November the Mexican Revolution began.

By May 1911, Porfirio Díaz was overthrown and Francisco Madero became president. Students at San Carlos saw this as an opening to get the traditional curriculum. along with the current director, thrown out and have one in line with Dr. Atl's manifesto instituted. They went on strike, which lasted more than a year. That same year, David Siqueiros, age fifteen, enrolled in evening classes at the Academy.

The strike, and life in Mexico City, was interrupted by the overthrow of President Madero by his general Victoriano Huerta during the Ten Tragic Days of February 9-19, 1913. The forces that had overthrown Díaz immediately rose up against Huerta. Dr. Atl had allied himself with Venustiano Carranza, governor of Sonora and self-declared Primer Jefe, First Boss, of the Constitutional Army created from various northern states. Atl left for Europe to gain support for Carranza.

Meanwhile, the Academy continued to function and a new director was appointed, Alfredo Ramos Martínez, who had just returned from Europe where he had studied Impressionist painting. He advocated painting from nature and focusing on the beauty of the Mexican countryside. One of his first acts as director was to rent a house in the then rural village of Santa Anita Ixtapalapa (now part of the Mexico City borough of that name), where he had students paint from nature in plein air, open air.

While Ramos Martínez extolled French Impressionism, even naming the school El Barbizón after the French village beloved by the Impressionists, the students rejected the continuing European focus and began painting local scenes and people of "el pueblo", the working class and poor, who were predominately indigenous. They became enamored with the popular and folk paintings of the barrios and the murals in cantinas (bars) and pulquerías (pulque is beer made from the sap of the agave succulent). They declared that European art, especially in its Classic Greco-Roman forms, was ugly and that the Mexican "Indian" and his art was the most beautiful.

Later in life, Siqueiros wrote:

"This was the beginning of a new aesthetic. Although childlike, we launched a permanent break with the archaic and academic pedagogy of the official art academy. It was at Santa Anita that we began to discover our own country." (Siqueiros, Biography of a Revolutionary Artist, D. Anthony White)

In the context of the revolt against Huerta that was going on (1913-14), these encounters with popular, lower class, indigenous poor also politically radicalized the students, who were mostly from rich upper-class familes. They began to participate in demonstrations against Huerta. The school was closed by the government. Some students left Mexico City to join the various factions allied, for the time being, in the rebellion: Venustiano Carranza, Emiliano Zapata and Francisco "Pancho" Villa.

When Huerta was defeated in July of 1914, and Carranza entered Mexico City, the Academy was reopened and Dr. Atl, who had returned from his mission to Europe on Carranza's behalf, was appointed its director. He spoke to the students about starting their own workshops for the "popular classes", i.e., the working class and poor. He also talked about the creation of murals in public spaces.

But this was but a brief respite in the civil war. After the attempt between Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata and Carranza to agree on a government failed at the Convention of Aguascalientes, in October of 1914, Villa and Zapata mobilized their armies against Carranza. In November, Carranza retreated to the state of Veracruz. Dr. Atl convinced many of the students at the Academy to join him and Carranza there.

Students Dispersed by War

Both Orozco and Siqueiros went with Atl to Veracruz. Orozco helped run a printing operation producing propaganda for Carranza. Siqueiros joined a group of adolescents who formed a batallion that went to the western part of Mexico to fight against Pancho Villa. Because of their age, they became known as the Batallón Mamá. When they arrived in Jalisco, Siqueiros was assigned to the staff of General Diéguez because he could read and write. He also participated in direct combat. 

After Carranza had defeated Villa and Zapata and forced them to retreat, Villa to the north, Zapata to the mountains of Moreles to the south, he returned to Mexico City, became provisional president, and after the approval of the Constitution of 1917, Mexico's elected president.

Orozco, disenchanted with war, went to the United States to try his success as a painter. Siqueiros was sent to Paris by Carranza to be a military attaché at the embassy, but actually giving him an opportunity to study European art. There, he met and became friends with Diego Rivera. 

José Vasconcelos and the Beginning of the Mexican Mural Movement

In 1921, Álvaro Obergón, Carranza's lead general, overthrew Carranza, who was killed on his way to Veracruz after fleeing Mexico City. As president, Obregón appointed José Vasconcelos, a lawyer and philosopher who had supported the Revolution, to be head of the new Secretariat of Public Education.

Vasconcelos saw as part of his mission fulfilling Dr. Atl´s call to create public murals for displaying the Mexican people, their history, the stuggles and achievements of the Revolution and a vision of their future as a new, modern nation. To implement this, he summoned three students from the Academy of San Carlos back to Mexico, Rivera and Siqueiros from Europe and Orozco from the United States.

As Orozco was to write later in his Autobiography, "the table was set for mural painting." The Mexican Mural Movement started at full steam. Dr. Atl's vision first began to be realized in real paint on real walls of public buildings in Mexico City, and then beyond. Atl, himself, continued to paint and advocate for popular folk art and murals until his death in 1964.

For more on Mexican Revolution and Mexican Muralists, see:

• Part I: Bellas Artes
• 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 background on the Mexican Revolution, see: Mexican Revolution: Its Protagonists and Antagonists