Title: Mexican Muralism | Art History Teaching Resources
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Content: Liberia and Sierra Leone
European and American Architecture (1750–1900)
Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth-Century Art in Europe and North America
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Sculpture
Realism to Post-Impressionism
Nineteenth-Century Photography
Architecture Since 1900
Twentieth-Century Photography
Modern Art (1900–50)
Mexican Muralism
Art Since 1950 (Part I)
Art Since 1950 (Part II)
Thematic Lesson Plans See all→
Art and Cultural Heritage Looting and Destruction
Art and Labor in the Nineteenth Century
Art and Political Commitment
Art History as Civic Engagement
Comics: Newspaper Comics in the United States
Comics: Underground and Alternative Comics in the United States
Disability in Art History
Educating Artists
Feminism & Art
Gender in Nineteenth-Century Art
Globalism and Transnationalism
Playing “Indian”: Manifest Destiny, Whiteness, and the Depiction of Native Americans
Queer Art: 1960s to the Present
Race and Identity
Race-ing Art History: Contemporary Reflections on the Art Historical Canon
Sacred Spaces
Sexuality in Art
Mexican Muralism
On this page
• First Things First...
• Background Readings
• Content Suggestions
• At the End of Class...
• Further Resources
First Things First...
The Mexican mural movement, or Mexican muralism, began as a government-funded form of public art—specifically, large-scale wall paintings in civic buildings—in the wake of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20). The Revolution was a massive civil war helmed by a number of factions with charismatic leaders—Francisco Madero, Venustiano Carranza, Pancho Villa, Emiliano Zapata, to name a few—all of whom had very specific political and social agendas. After the Revolution, then, the government took on the very difficult project of transforming a divided Mexico of maderistas, carrancistas, villistas, zapatistas, and so on, into a coherent nation of mexicanos. To do so, it needed to create an official history of Mexico in which its citizens would find themselves, and it needed a medium that could propagate this to a largely poor, illiterate populace. Enter Mexican muralism.