LATIN AMERICAN MURALISM Modern Art

MEXICAN INDEPENDENCEMexican Independence was sparked by political turmoil in Spain, the mother country. Mexican officials were receiving conflicting instructions on how to run the government. Some people revolted because they wanted self-government. One of these revolts was led by Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla. On September 16, 1810, in the town of Dolores, he called out for “independencia,” a decree eventually known as “Grito de Dolores,” which called for the end of Spanish rule, equality between races and redistribution of land. This day is now celebrated as Mexican Independence Day.

REVOLUTION• Porfirio Díaz instituted most of the reforms set

up by Juarez and started making Mexico the modern country it wanted to be. He used political allies, called científicos, to advise him in this endeavor. They stressed the need for economic development and believed that anyone who got in the way was to be punished. Liberty was sacrificed for the realization of order and progress.

• Indians were still treated as second-class citizens, the European ideal of beauty and fashion was the standard, and a celebration or understanding of Mexican history or identity did not exist. Criticism came from the younger generations and those who did not benefit from economic success.

• Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, Venustiano Carranza etc.

In 1920 General Alvaro Obregón organized a coup and took office as president. He began to implement the ideals set forth by the constitution, giving land to the landless and offering workers more rights, and established an environment of growth, Mexican identity and love for Mexico’s unique heritage. From all the fighting, many artists, intellectuals, writers and students wanted to uphold ideals of equality and freedom. They wanted to celebrate Indian heritage and repress European ideals. José Vasconcelos- would become the new Secretary of Public Education and would administer the creation of murals.

LATIN AMERICAN

INDEPENDENCE 1810- Mexico 1811- Paraguay 1818-Argentina 1821- Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica 1822- Ecuador1824- Peru & Brazil 1826- Chile1830- Uruguay

MODERN ARTFollowing the Mexican Revolution, the Mexican government supported the development of a new school of art to break with the dominance of the European tradition. This new movement sought to create a “real” Mexican art that would strengthen and reaffirm Mexican identity and the values of the Revolution. The Mexican Muralist movement was born as a means to provide a visual narrative of the post-Revolutionary vision of Mexican history and was driven by the ideal that art should be “by the public, for the public.”

MAIN INFLUENCES AND IDEAS

• José Guadalupe Posada• Dr. Atl• Saturnino Herrán• Italian Renaissance frescos • Murals are to publically advocate

for change• Directed toward mass population

who was illerate • Meant to promote pride and

respect for culture- especially Mestizo and Indian cultures

• Convey information about Pre-Columbian heritage

• Teach about the Conquest and the Revolution

JOSÉ GUADALUPE POSADA

(1852-1913)• Mexican popular engraver• Would influence the muralists of Mexico by

the way his figures tell stories • Posada’s prolific output of prints

represented for Rivera the vitality of Mexico’s rich traditions of popular art and the most penetrating views of Mexican social life in the years before the revolution.

• A political populist, championing the cause of justice and freedom.

• crafted an estimated 15,000 different images in woodcuts, type-metal engravings, and zinc relief etchings!

• Posada documented the world around him, ushering in the great age of Mexican printmaking.

• his subjects ranged from the local to the national to the supernatural

José Guadalupe Posada. Calavera catrina. 1890s

JOSÉ GUADALUPE POSADANEWSPAPERMEN DEPICTED AS BICYCLING SKELETONS1890

CALAVERAS OF THE MASSES1910MEXICO CITY Some prints used skeletons to parody political leaders, social movements, and even the production of broadsides. These sheets, known as calaveras, drew on a long tradition of producing satirical caricatures for the Dia de los Muertos. The penny sheets were very popular, at a time of high illiteracy rates.

This broadside was produced after November 20, 1910, when Francisco Madero called for an armed insurrection against the Diaz regime.

DR. ATL • His birth name was Gerardo Murillo Cornado,

his artist name is Nahuatl for ‘water’• Professor and artist who promoted modern

art, Indian art and the idea of a Mexican national art.

• The Mexican countryside became a central and significant theme in Mexican painting

• His work promoted an anti-academic and in Mexican terms, modernist art.

• signaled his admiration for Mexico's ancient culture

• Having been a prime instigator of the Mexican mural movement, Atl went on to become Mexico's leading advocate for landscape painting as an artistic endeavor of grand scope and universal meaning, and he dedicated his career to the intensive study of Mexico's volcanoes Dr. Atl. Self-Portrait with Popocatépetl. 1928.

Atl color (oil, wax, dry resin, and gasoline) on canvas

• Dr. Atl had traveled extensively through Europe and was fascinated by the importance of murals of the Italian Renaissance (15th-16th century).

• He admired the work of Michelangelo and Leonardo for their spiritualism and spontaneous energy.

• He believed that this dimension was needed in order to create a Mexican modernism.

• Dr. Atl first began with the concept of using mural paintings in order to decorate which would inspire the future muralists to create politically infused murals.

Michelangelo. Sistine Chapel. 1512. Vatican City, Italy.

SATURNINO HERRÁNTHE LEGEND OF THE VOLCANOS1910. TRIPTYCH. OIL ON CANVAS

• Depiction of pre-Hispanic themes, in which “the figure of the Indian stands as symbolic and allegorical representation of spiritual and moral virtues in the race”

SATURNINO HERRÁNLegend of the volcanoes might be considered the last major history painting of the 19th century Mexico, or the first great one of the 20th century. The painting fuses diverse genres, including allegory, history, and landscape. His subjects are not resurrected archaeological heroes denoting political morality, but contemporary symbols infused with universal themes dear to the modernsitas: passion, suffering and tragedy. Herrán portrayed an Aztec myth that explained the origin of the volcanoes in human rather than geological terms. In the painting, the lovers’ bodies literally become as green as ice. But Herrán reinterpreted the tragic story using race, rather than social class, as the barrier to union, in order to allude to an equally tragic national narrative.

LOS TRES GRANDES(THE THREE GREAT)• David Alfaro Siqueiros• Diego Rivera• José Clemente Orozco.

DIEGO RIVERA(1886-1957) • Born in Guanajuato, Mexico• Prodigy artist- started drawing at the

age of 3 and was formally admitted into the art academy at the age of 10 at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City

• Self-proclaimed atheist and active communist

• His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in Mexican art.

• Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals among others in Mexico City, Chapingo, Cuernavaca, San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City

• Studied in Europe, specifically in Spain, Italy and France and produced many Modern works of art that were particular to the European style. (Cubism and Post-Impressionism)

• One of the most influential works to inspire Rivera were the Italian murals of the Renaissance.

• Vasconcelos convinces Rivera to come to Mexico and bring his knowledge of art back home and create murals for the Mexican government.

• Rivera is considered by many to be the father of Mexican muralism and the creator of Modern Mexican art

• Rivera is best known for his depiction of the working class and of indigenous people

Diego Rivera, Maternidad, Angelina y el niño Diego (Motherhood, Angelina and the Child Diego).1916. Oil on canvas. Cubism

Diego Rivera. The Great City of Tenochtitlan. Fresco. 1945. National Palace, Mexico City

MINISTRY OF EDUCATION MURALS. FRESCOS. 1924 MEXICO CITYTHE FRESCOS SHOW THE TRADITIONAL CUSTOMS AND FESTIVALS

OF THE INDIAN PEASANT. THESE IMAGES FOCUS ON THE INDIAN PRESENTING THEM AS THE

QUINTESSENCE OF THE REAL MEXICO. The Corn Festival The Ribbon Dance

Diego Rivera 1924-7. Rivera Chapel.

Autonomous University of Chapingo (UACh), Mexico

• the biological and geological evolutionary cycles of the earth.

• The social and political revolution is therefore presented as the counterpart to the process of the natural evolution of the earth.

• the work divides into three parts.

• The left panel depicts man’s struggle to have land

• the right panel shows the evolution of Mother Nature

• center shows the communion between man and earth.

• It is considered to be one of Rivera’s best works

TO ALL THOSE WHO FELL AND TO THE THOUSANDS WHO WILL YET FALL IN THE FIGHT FOR THE LAND AND TO ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT FRUITFUL BY THE LABOR OF THEIR HANDS. EARTH MANURED WITH BLOOD, BONES AND FLESH! TO COMMEMORATE ALL THOSE WHO SACRIFICED THEMSELVES TO IT. THIS WORK IS DEDICATED TO THEM BY ALL THOSE WHO TOOK PART IN IT. LEFT HAND SIDE: CONTAINS A SERIES OF FRESCO PANELS DEPICTING THE REVOLUTIONARY TRANSFORMATION OF THE OWNERSHIP OF THE LAND.

Alliance of the Peasant and the Industrial Worker.

The Blood of the Revolutionary Martyrs Fertilizing the Earth

RIGHT HAND SIDE: SIDE OF THE CHAPEL AND ACTING AS ATHEMATIC MIRROR TO THE IMAGES, RIVERA PRESENTS THE BIOLOGICAL AND GEOLOGICAL

EVOLUTIONARY CYCLES OF THE EARTH. THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL REVOLUTION IS THEREFORE PRESENTED AS THE COUNTERPART TO THE PROCESS OF THE NATURAL EVOLUTION OF

THE EARTH.

The Flowering Subterranean Forces

THE LIBERATED EARTH WITH THE NATURAL FORCES CONTROLLED BY

MAN• A glorious conclusion to the portrayal of

revolutionary transformation and natural evolution.

• Painted after Rivera’s wife Guadalupe Marin, who was then pregnant with heir first child, the monumental and voluptuous nude reclines, representing the fertile earth.

• Attending her are the forces of nature: fire, wind and water.

• Water is represented by a woman who sits in front of a giant hydro-electric tube.

• Wind represented as a windmill• Fire: as Prometheus handing fire to man.

THE LAND’S BOUNTY RIGHTFULLY POSSESSED

Images of men clutching hammers and sickles and sheaves of corn emphasizing the idea of the socialized transformation of the land.

JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO

1883-1949• Born in Jalisco and studied at the

Academy of San Carlos. • Was part of the Mexican Revolution and

lost his left hand. • Heavily influenced by José Guadalupe

Posada, worked in full view of the public in shop windows located on the way Orozco went to school.

• In his autobiography, Orozco confesses, "I would stop [on my way to and from school] and spend a few enchanted minutes in watching [Posada]… This was the push that first set my imagination in motion and impelled me to cover paper with my earliest little figures; this was my awakening to the existence of the art of painting."

JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO Most of the murals done by José Clemente Orozco have with themes of a mestizo Mexico, the ideas of renovation and the tragedies of the Revolution.Because Orozco did experience the horrors of war he often expresses the grotesqueness of war in his work. Orozco was the most complex of the Mexican muralists, fond of the theme of human suffering, but less realistic and more fascinated by machines than Rivera. Between 1922 and 1948, Orozco painted murals in Mexico City, Orizaba, Claremont, California, New York City, Hanover, New Hampshire, Guadalajara, Jalisco, and Jiquilpan, Michoacán.

THE TRENCHNATIONAL

PREPARATORY SCHOOL

MEXICO CITY, 1926Powerful image relating to the revolution

and human tragedy. Three men are shown martyred for their cause of the revolution. The symbolism is similar to that of the crucifixion of Christ, demonstrating the sacrifice for humanity. There is no enthusiasm about the war nor even a suggestion of pride in the painting but demonstrating a human tragedy instead.

FRANCISCAN FRIARHOSPICIO CABAÑASGUADALAJARA, JALISCO, MX1938-1939The message of the murals is not a comforting one: the Indian world is perceived as cruel and savage, and the Spanish conquest as even more harsh. A Franciscan friar seems to threaten a kneeling Indian with a crucifix, which looks more like a word with point held downwards. “the most important area of domination by colonialism was in ‘the mental universe of the colonized, the control through culture of how a people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world.. To control a people’s culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to other.” – Ngugi Wa-Thiongo, Kenyan writer.

THE SPANISH CONQUEST OF MEXICOHOSPICIO CABAÑASGUADALAJARA, JALISCO, MX1938-1939• The horse that carried the

conquistadores to victory is transmuted into a magical but sinister machine, with a flowing tail made up of loops and chains.

• The coloring, mostly blacks and reds, is an harsh as the composition.

DAVID ALFARO SIQUEIROS1896-1974

A Mexican social realist painter, better known for his large murals in frescoHe was a Stalinist and member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky in May 1940.At the age of 18 he fought in the Revolution under Venustiano Carranza His military travels around the country exposed him to Mexican culture and the raw everyday struggles of the working and rural poor classesSiqueiros would develop a mural technique that involved tracing figures onto a wall with an electric projector, photographing early wall sketches to improve perspective, and new paints, spray guns, and other tools to accommodate the surface of modern buildings and the outdoor conditions

David Alfaro Siquiros. The New Democracy. 1944-45 Mexico City, Mexico.

THE NEW DEMOCRACYA giant female Revolutionary figure bursting out of a volcano, thrusting aside the chains of her oppression and subjugation. Reliance on the centrality of a singular monumental figure to convey the narrative.

The Torment of Cuauhtémoc. 1950. Mexico City, Mexico.

THE TORMENT OF CUAUHTÉMOC, 1950Centers on the captive of Cuauhtémoc by Cortez’s forces and the torture he underwent to reveal the whereabouts of the supposed hidden Aztec gold.

THE RESURRECTION OF CUAUHTÉMOC Depicting Cuauhtémoc reborn in the armor of a Spanish ConquistadorEmbedded is the idea that the superiority of the Spanish conquistador derived not from divine orientation but from the technical sophistication of his armor and weaponry.

David Alfaro Siqueiros. América Tropical. Los Angeles, California, USA.

JUAN O’GORMAN. THE COLONIAL PAST. MOASIC ON THE CENTRAL LIBRARY, MEXICO UNIVERSITY, MEXICO CITY, 1952. The Flat almost windowless surfaces of the library tower are covered in intricate designs made of native stones, producing an effect that is more like woven cloth than like painting. The designs are of Pre-Columbian inspiration No concern for narrative. Became a symbol of the ability of Mexican artists to revive certain aspects of the Indian past without seeming sentimental or nostalgic. North Wall: Pre-Hispanic PastSouth Wall: Colony PastEast Wall: Contemporaneous WorldWest Wall: The University and Modern Mexico

RUFINO TAMAYO DUALITY1964 MEXICO CITY Tamayo was inspired by Mexica cosmology of the opposite and completnary forces of life. This is his personal interpretation of these pre-Hispanic symbols. “Its a struggle of life giving elements: on one side we have good, wisom and light and on the other the bad and the darkness”

The sun is symbolzed by a turqouise feathered serpent, Quetzalcóatl in calm colors, a semi-twsisted body and an open mouth with the sun in full flight. The night is represented by the god Tezcatlipoca in the shape of a jaguar. The background has cold colors and a descending moon.

JORGE GONZÁLEZ CAMARENA

PRESENCE OF LATIN AMERICA

CHILE 1965Its principal theme is the unity and brotherhood of the different Latin American cultures.The mural describes the history of Latin America through the use of angular, symbolic images, which emphasize the value of fraternity between the different ethnicities of the Spanish American world. The work is read chronologically from right to left.There is no beauty like the beauty of America spread out in its hells / in its mountains of rock and power, in its atavistic and eternal rivers…Pablo Neruda-Pre-Columbian Past-Miscegenation-Fraternity

Miguel Alandia Pantoja. Bolivian Medicine. Worker’s Hospital, La Paz, Bolivia. 1957 (pg 75)

The imagery, with native animals and flowers to the left and a dominant Indian medicine man conjuring an enormous serpent in the center, seems to suggest that modern science, symbolized by rather cowed-looking figures to the right, is inferior to inherited indigenous wisdom. Entering at the extreme right, a group of miners seem to threaten the representatives of Westernized modernity.

OSWALDO GUAYASAMÍN

EL INCARIO Y LA CONQUISTA

(INCA EMPIRE AND THE CONQUEST).

1977Born in Quito, EcuadorMetizo: Metizo mother and Quechua father Moved to Mexico and worked under OrozcoCubist style painting that depicts the pain and misery. Denounces the effects of war on humanity and progress

CÂNDIDO PORTINARITHE FIRST MASS IN BRAZIL1948• Early in his career he decided only to

paint Brazilian people • Strongly influenced by Diego Rivera• He fused native and expressionist art• Depicts the first mass ever held in

Brazil.• However, the work does not

romanticize the moment but distorts the environment which suggests a prophecy of how the Portuguese would victimize the land and its people.

EDGAR FLORES “SANER”TEJEDORES DE SUEÑOS (WEAVERS OF DREAMS)2010 MEXICO CITYA man and a women hold in their hands the future of their race. They manipulate the fine threads with which they braid different histories represented by the different patterns. They hide their faces behind pre-Columbian masks. The man and woman are representative of society as a whole. The different ethnic groups of Mexico are represented with the patterns.

MIGUEL MEJIA “NEUZZ”MEXICO CITY, 2014Stuck in a mystical world of witches, old tales and masks, Neuzz brings life to abandoned areas. Calling attention to the pre-Colubmian past of of Mexican imagery, he creates graffiti merging Aztec iconography, Mexican images and contemporary graffiti images.

OS GÊMEOS (THE TWINS)BRAZIL Subjects range from family portraits to commentary on São Paulo's social and political circumstances, as well as Brazilian folklore. Their graffiti style was influenced by both traditional hip hop style and the Brazilian cultureThey’re some of the most renowned artists in the world as far as big, public outdoor muralsOs Gemeos strayed away from the tradition of graffiti-writing and embraced figuration. But their most famous are really these yellow figures with these red hoods. Symbol for the unrepresentative people.

RICARDO CAVOLO

MEXICO 2014Frida is surrounded by volcanoes, cactus, birds with three eyes, tropical fruits and flowers, many flowers, coming out from her head as if they were a crown of thorns and flames. Instead of a double eyebrow, Ricardo has painted a large bird looking at the sky, and the battered spine that kept Frida prostrate on the bed, appears as well on the mural with flames of fire and passion. With all this, Ricardo Cavolo pays tribute to the art of a country that he has always been attracted to and where his work is understood naturally, because connects wonderfully with Mexican tradition, with its rituals, customs and especially with Frida Kahlo

JADE UNO (JADE RIVERA)

PERU 2012Growing up in an impoverished area of Lima, Peru. Jade Uno was motivated to devote his artwork to represent lower-class people who are often looked past especially in regards to economic development. The street artist painted a reflection of the social and environmental damages inflicted to the inhabitants by the nearby mining pit.

INTI (CHILEAN) BOLIVIA “FRANCISCANO ANDINO”2013With a warm orange glow, INTI’s murals often contain themes of life, death, ancient religion and Christianity, all drawn together with one or two strange characters. The characters are like blending of all things Chilean: the Incans, the tribesmen, the peasants, the Catholics and the revolutionaries but with a strange mutant-like creepiness. There is a strong political edge to many of his pieces. INTI proudly flaunts South America’s rich cultural history in the face of globalized capitalism, whilst still addressing Chile’s problems of poverty and their rocky recent history.

EDUARDO KOBRA“WELCOME TO REAL BRAZIL” SAO PAULO, BRAZIL. 2014Using his signature classic kaleidoscope technique, the Brazilian artist and his team painted this powerful statement in a time where all eyes are pointed toward Brazil.He addresses homeless and unemployment issues that are currently on the raise in BrazilThe protests were primarily concerned with the spending of billions of reais of public money on stadiums for the World Cup