Увеличить

The third stage of Mexico’s murals brought about the paintings of the Revolution, with a much acuter national accent and a clear-cut intention to unveil the footprints of the past and the teachings of universal art as construed by each and every artist.

Mexico's ancient pre-Hispanic murals left an unmatchable testimony of walls painted with the use of old-timed indigenous techniques in which their major standouts are decorative themes (the paintings in the buildings of Teotihuacan); mythological (murals of Mitla, Santa Rita, Tulum), and historic or descriptive (Teotihuacan and Chichen-Itza).

The second stage of Mexico's murals turned out to be one of the most valuable manifestations of the Viceroy-time art and was expressed through the decoration of temples and monasteries during most of the 16th century. The following centuries left that kind of art fall by the wayside as walls were then plastered with huge layers of limestone that eventually hid the paintings. Nevertheless, this process contributed to the preservation of murals. In the mid 20th century, though, the big murals of the colonial rule were unearthed for the whole world to see.

The third stage of Mexico's murals brought about the paintings of the Revolution, with a much acuter national accent and a clear-cut intention to unveil the footprints of the past and the teachings of universal art as construed by each and every artist. Murals then were intended to combine the peculiar indigenous morphology through European techniques of the Renaissance (fresco is a case in point) and contemporary stylistics that assimilated pre-courtesan monumental architecture in an effort to achieve both a narrative and ecumenical expression in the same breath.

Murals during the Mexican Revolution The revolutionary period between 1920 and 1928 kicked off with one of the biggest samples of nationalism in the arts: murals. Under a coined slogan reading Nationalize Sciences and Mexicanize Knowledge, the trend had been born a few years before at the Ateneo de la Juventud, a solid-as-a-rock core of intellectuals that were at the time busy delving into the roots of Mexico and out on a quest for the national soul of the country.

Even though the association outlived the first years of the Revolution, it did lay its foundations among such outstanding members as Jose Vasconcelos and Diego Rivera. The former, at the helm of the Department of Public Education in 1921, urged the painting of huge murals that recreated the history of Mexico, the struggle of its people, the exploitation most Mexicans endured and their contribution to the building of a national consciousness. On the other hand, Diego Rivera –a former member of the Ateneo- Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros splayed their frescos with conflicting images, anguish, hopes and the victory of the Mexican people. They thought up a collective character: the popular masses.

Rivera hadn't lived the years of upheaval in his homeland and came back home carrying lots of avant-garde esthetical influences. Orozco returned from the United States, where he had lived since 1917, with a much defined style of his own. Alfaro Siqueiros signed up later on and chipped in the common exaltation of artistic social criteria.

Despite having wide apart esthetic and ideological standpoints, these muralists were bonded together by a basic idea: the attainment of a true national language. This monumental painting, splayed on huge walls, was above all a civic kind of painting made for the majority of the people. The use of big public buildings, the themes and their close interrelation with the country's lifestyle served that purpose well.

Diego Rivera: contradictory and genial Some say Rivera made the politician in him prevail over the artist. However, he was a cultivated man with an exquisite taste and an undisputed mastery of pictorial techniques. Some of his works have put him forever in the realm of the greatest Mexican muralists of all time.

Some of his most significant murals were: - Mexico's National Palace. A fresco made by Rivera between 1930 and 1935, this is a monumental example of the painter's social, political and esthetic ideas and style. The mural depicts the good and bad moments of Mexico's historical development. In all, the total painted surface embraces 275.17 square meters across the walls of the honor staircase, plus 87.21 square meters along the corridors.

- The former chapel of the Chapingo National School of Agriculture (near Texcoco). The articulation between architectural forms and themes, colorfulness and the touch of poetry that pops up in every detail turn The Fertile Land into Rivera's most complete and genial work of all. After taking a long peek at it, famous art critic Louis Pierard said: “Chapingo is the Sistine Chapel of the Mexican Revolution.” The work is completed with the paintings on the school building (708.52 square meters in all) that were done between 1926 and 1927.

- Museum of the Alameda, Mexico, D.F. The main mess hall of the Prado Hotel was used by Riviera to paint one of his most interesting murals between 1947 and 1948. Entitled Dream of a Sunday Afternoon at the Central Alameda, this 72-square-meter mural is a must-see. In one of its sections –in a significantly fine metaphor- there are some familiar faces there that meet the eye: Jose Guadalupe Posada, harbinger of neo-realism in the Mexican arts; Frida Kahlo, Rivera's former wife and a woman he loved dearly; Jose Marti, the apostle of Cuban independence, and the painter himself during his childhood. In the wake of all the damage endured by the hotel during the 1985 earthquake, this amazing mural was moved to the Museum of the Alameda on Juarez Avenue.

Diego Rivera was, within the Mexican artistic movement, a positive construer of the ways he traveled with his works and with one goal in mind: “Linking a great past with the great future we want for Mexico.”