Mexican muralism
A nation's history painted on public walls: art for the people, not the salon
How to recognise it
- Frescoes covering whole walls of public buildings
- Dense crowds of workers, peasants, Indigenous people
- Aztec past beside machines and revolution
- Heavy rounded figures, earthy reds and ochres
Why it emerged
After the 1910–1920 Revolution, education minister José Vasconcelos handed artists the walls of schools and ministries to tell a largely illiterate population a new national story. Fresco was cheap, durable and visible to everyone.
Examples
Detroit Industry Murals1932–1933 · Diego Rivera27 fresco panels on Ford's River Rouge plant: the assembly line as epic, workers as heroesMan at the Crossroads (Man, Controller of the Universe)1934 · Diego RiveraRemake of the Rockefeller Center fresco destroyed over Lenin's portrait, muralism's great scandal
The Epic of American Civilization1932–1934 · José Clemente Orozco24 panels from Aztec migration to deadened academia: a bleak answer to Rivera's optimism
América Tropical1932 · David Alfaro SiqueirosA crucified Indigenous man under a US eagle; whitewashed, later an icon of the Chicano movement
Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Central1947 · Diego Rivera400 years of Mexican history in one promenade, with skeleton Catrina, boy Diego and FridaHow it spread
- 1922 Mexico City
- 1931 San Francisco
- 1932 Los Angeles
- 1932 Detroit
- 1932 Hanover, New Hampshire
- 1933 New York
- 1936 Guadalajara
Meanwhile elsewhere
- Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers) Eastern Europe & Russia
- Expressionism Europe
- Cubism Europe
- Russian avant-garde Eastern Europe & Russia
- Harlem Renaissance Americas
- Modern architecture (International Style) Whole world
- Constructivism Eastern Europe & Russia
- Art Deco Europe
- Surrealism Europe
- Socialist realism Eastern Europe & Russia
- Abstract expressionism Americas