Title: All You Need to Know About Mexican Muralism and Muralists | Widewalls
Headings: All You Need to Know About Mexican Muralism and Muralists
All You Need to Know About Mexican Muralism and Muralists
June 17, 2016
Mexican Muralism - Hand-in-Hand with Politics and People
Mural - The Characteristics and Significance
Los Tres Grandes - The Three Great Muralists of Mexico
Diego Rivera
José Clemente Orozco
David Alfaro Siqueiros
Video - Most Important Mexican Muralists of the Muralist Arts Movement
The Influence and Legacy
Follow These Artists
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Content: Undisputed by the state, and even getting along with it - at least for a while - it was above all public and free, made accessible to the people and not just a few wealthy collectors. These large-scale paintings graced the walls of centuries-old colonial buildings, prestigious schools and national offices, as they depicted indigenous Mexican culture, the fighting and the outcome of the Revolution, the mixed-race mestizo identity and all things related to traditions of Latin America and Mesoamerica. The muralists were completely free in their choice of topic and technique, as they all believed art is the highest form of human expression, and because their murals carried a political message, Mexican muralism became a form of social realism at its finest. The artists, including “los tres grades” Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, portrayed the Aztec warriors battling the Spanish in their fight for the independence, humble peasants fighting in the Revolution, common laborers of Mexico City using fresco, encaustic, mosaic of glass, ceramic and metal, and sculpture-painting. They worked in the country’s urban areas and were prominent political activists overall, dedicated to creating modern Mexico. Their communist backgrounds and the respect for Marxism and class struggle, however, were often visible in their murals, although always subtly and never quite radically. José Clemente Orozco - Destruction of the Old Order (detail), 1926 at National Preparatory School, Mexico City
Los Tres Grandes - The Three Great Muralists of Mexico
We wouldn’t be able to talk about Mexican muralism as we know it today without its three key muralists: Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Legendary, innovative, daring and incredibly patriotic, these gentlemen were “los tres grandes” - the three great ones who had continued the work of José Vasconcelos which used art as the most powerful tool in cultural and social revolution. With various styles and temperaments, yet with the same visions, los tres grandes all graduated from the prestigious San Carlos Academy, studied in Europe and were inspired by its modernist painting, although in different amounts.