Among the projects these politically motivated artists undertook were
vast mural cycles placed in public buildings to dramatize and validate
the history of Mexico’s native peoples. Orozco worked on one of the
first major cycles, painted in 1922 on the walls of the National Train-
ing School in Mexico City. He carried the ideas of this mural revo-
lution to the United States, completing many commissions for wall
paintings between 1927 and 1934. From 1932 to 1934, he worked on
one of his finest mural cycles in Baker Library at Dartmouth College
in New Hampshire, partly in honor of its superb collection of books
in Spanish. The college let him choose the subject. Orozco depicted, in
14 large panels and 10 smaller ones, a panoramic and symbolic history
of ancient and modern Mexico, from the early mythic days of the
feathered-serpent god Quetzalcoatl (see Chapters 14 and 32) to a con-
temporary and bitterly satiric vision of modern education.
The imagery in panel 16,Epic of American Civilization: Hispano-
America (FIG. 35-67), revolves around the monumental figure of a
heroic Mexican peasant armed to participate in the Mexican Revolu-
tion. Looming on either side of him are mounds crammed with
symbolic figures of his oppressors—bankers, government soldiers,
officials, gangsters, and the rich. Money-grubbers pour hoards of
gold at the incorruptible peon’s feet, cannons threaten him, and a
bemedaled general raises a dagger to stab him in the back. Orozco’s
training as an architect gave him a sense of the framed wall surface,
which he easily commanded, projecting his clearly defined figures
onto the solid mural plane in monumental scale. In addition,
Orozco’s early training as a maker of political prints and as a news-
paper artist had taught him the rhetorical strength of graphic
brevity, which he used here to assure that his allegory could be read
easily. His special merging of the graphic and mural media effects
gives his work an originality and force rarely seen in mural painting
after the Renaissance and Baroque periods.DIEGO RIVERA Like his countryman,Diego Rivera(1886–
1957) received great acclaim for his murals, both in Mexico and in
the United States. A staunch Marxist, Rivera strove to develop an art
that served his people’s needs (see “Rivera on Art for the People,”
above). Toward that end, he sought to create a national Mexican
style focusing on Mexico’s history and incorporating a popular, gen-
erally accessible aesthetic in keeping with the socialist spirit of the
Mexican Revolution. Rivera produced numerous large murals in
public buildings, among them a series lining the staircase of the Na-
tional Palace in Mexico City. In these images, painted between 1929
and 1935, he depicted scenes from Mexico’s history, of which Ancient
Mexico (FIG. 35-68) is one. This section of the mural represents theAmerica, 1930 to 1945 959D
iego Rivera was an avid propo-
nent of a social and political role
for art in the lives of common people
and wrote passionately about the
proper goals for an artist—goals he fully
met in his murals depicting Mexican
history (FIG. 35-68). Rivera’s views
stand in sharp contrast to the growing
interest in abstraction on the part of
many early-20th-century painters and
sculptors.
Art has always been employed by the
different social classes who hold the
balance of power as one instrument of
domination—hence, as a political in-
strument. One can analyze epoch after
epoch—from the stone age to our own
day—and see that there is no form of
art which does not also play an essen-
tial political role....What is it then
that we really need?... An art with
revolution as its subject: because the
principal interest in the worker’s life
has to be touched first. It is necessary
that he find aesthetic satisfaction and
the highest pleasure appareled in the
essential interest of his life....The
subject is to the painter what the rails are to a locomotive. He cannot
do without it. In fact, when he refuses to seek or accept a subject, his
own plastic methods and his own aesthetic theories become his sub-
ject instead....[H]e himself becomes the subject of his work. He be-comes nothing but an illustrator of his own state of mind ...That is
the deception practiced under the name of “Pure Art.”*
* Quoted in Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves, eds.,Artists on Art from the XIV
to the XX Century(New York: Pantheon, 1945), 475–477.Rivera on Art for the People
ARTISTS ON ART35-68Diego Rivera,Ancient Mexico,from the History of Mexico, Palacio Nacional, Mexico City,
1929–1935. Fresco.
A staunch Marxist, Rivera painted vast mural cycles in public buildings to dramatize the history of his
native land. This fresco depicts the conflicts between indigenous Mexicans and the Spanish colonizers.