The Mexican Muralism Movement

Art in itself can be seen as a revolution and bring out intense emotions onto the artist and the viewer. During and after the Mexican Revolution, many artists in Mexico felt an inspiration to make their own revolution and reveal it to the world through murals. Murals were originally used as a way to spread visual messages to an illiterate population, which opened up new possibilities in the inclusion and sense of community within a people. These messages provided artists with the ability to share pride in their identities, historical traditions, or political beliefs.The work of “The Big Three” of Mexican muralists, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, as well as artists Fernando Leal and Aurora Reyes Flores, all led to the normalization of public art and inclusion of the everyday person into the world of art.

In this exhibition, there are a total of 8 works of art. Collectively, you will see artworks from “the big three”, and two other artists who were very important to the movement but did not achieve the same status as the three most well-known Mexican muralists. Starting off with probably the most notorious of the artists in this exhibition, is Diego Rivera. The two selected murals for Rivera are La Historia de México and El Hombre Controlador del Universo. Rivera arrived back to Mexico in 1922, when the country was still struggling with the aftermath of the Revolution, and he took his murals as a venture to address the everyday person and tell stories of Mexican society.  The next mural was made by Fernando Leal. Los Danzantes de Chalma was very pertinent to this art movement because it brought up the Indigenous peoples and roots of Mexico during a time when previous to that, the native people of Mexico were consistently repressed and taken out of the narrative in society. Fernando Leal is known to be one of the first muralists of this movement. 

Jose Clemente Orozco told the darker side of the Revolution through his artwork. Having been the only one out of “the big three” to actually be in Mexico during the time of the war, he had a first hand experience of the bleakness of Mexican society at the time. His two chosen artworks, The Trench and El Hombre en Llamas, show his despondency and lack of hope caused by the horrors he had witnessed in his lifetime. Being the oldest of the great three, Orozco was able to see that there were always two sides of everything, and during a time where many were glorifying the war, he made sure to bring the focus back onto those who had to suffer for all to be confident in the state of the country Mexico was in at the time. 

The next artist is Aurora Reyes Flores. She was the first female muralist of this movement as well as the first exponent of the movement. Unfortunately she does not receive the same fame as her male counterparts however she deserves so much more recognition than she gets. The mural Atentado a los Maestros Rurales, is one of her most famous works and she is known for being a trailblazer for Mexican women in art and transforming public art in Mexico. The final two artworks are made by the third great of Mexican muralism, David Alfaro Siqueiros. He focused a lot on the political aspects of art and the war and that is why his work the Birth of Fascism is included even though it is a painting and not one of his murals. His second work displayed is Portrait of the Bourgeoisie, which also reveals his socialist views through his art. His artworks became very famous in particular because Mexico had just gotten out of a dictatorship and he was able to speak and relate to the working class and lower-income people of Mexico without words. 

Using murals as a way to spread visual messages to the people of Mexico, these artists created an identity all Mexicans could relate to. By promoting a sense of pride in cultural identity, a brotherhood in a shared grief, and providing a representation for populations that had been silenced, these muralists changed the way art was perceived, forever. The Mexican Muralism Movement, a movement born from the Mexican Revolution, created a revolution of its own in the art world.