Title: The Mexican Renaissance | Boundless Art History
Headings: The Mexican Renaissance
The Mexican Renaissance
Mexican Muralism
Learning Objectives
Key Takeaways
Key Points
Key Terms
Mexican Muralism
Los Tres Grandes
Diego Rivera
Jose Clemente Orozco
David Alfaro Siqueiros
Mexican Painting: Frida Kahlo
Learning Objectives
Key Takeaways
Key Points
Frida Kahlo
Paintings
Influences
Artistic Legacy

Content: Vasconcelos helped establish a government-backed mural program, hiring the country’s best artists, for this purpose. Similar to mural use in the pre-Hispanic and colonial periods, the purpose of these murals were not simply aesthetic, but social, to promote certain ideals. These ideals or principles were to glorify the Mexican Revolution and the identity of Mexico as a mestizo nation, with the indigenous promoted as well as the Spanish. The movement was strongest from the 1920s to the 1950s, which corresponded to the country’s transformation from a mostly rural and mostly illiterate society to an industrialized one. While today they are part of Mexico’s identity, at the time they were controversial, especially those with socialist messages plastered on centuries-old colonial buildings. One of the basic underpinnings of the nascence of a post-revolutionary Mexican art was that it should be public, available to the citizenry, and above all not the province of a few wealthy collectors. The great societal upheaval, as well as a lack of relatively wealthy middle class to support the arts, made the concept possible, and on this the painters and the government agreed. Though commissioned by the government, the artists maintained complete freedom of expression; in addition to the original ideas of a reconstructed Mexico and the elevation of Mexico’s indigenous and rural identity, many of the muralists included elements of Marxism—especially the struggle of the working class against oppression. The murals, due to their locations and themes, took on a monumental status.