Title: Mexican Muralism | Art History Teaching Resources
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Content: 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. Out of a host of Mexican artists, three emerged as its most devoted, celebrated, and prolific, to the extent that they came to be referred to as los tres grandes (“the three greats”): José Clemente Orozco (1883–1949), Diego Rivera (1886–1957), and David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974). While the mural project employed a host of artists from across the country, the influence and prominence of Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros was so great that it makes sense to limit a discussion of muralism largely to them for an introductory lecture on the topic. Each had a different personality, ideology, style, and sphere of influence, and a well-developed survey on Mexican muralism can be taught through their works. This unit is an excellent opportunity to talk about the ways that artistic representation expresses cultural values: