Monumental Diego Rivera
The Mexican government commissioned Jose Clemente Orozco, David Alvaro Siquieros, and Diego Rivera to paint a series of frescoes for public buildings, starting what became known as the Mexican Mural Renaissance. Their works created a new iconography that represented social and national themes, religious motifs, and a pro-Hispanic world view. Mexican artists were urged to forego so-called easel painting favored by the elite because it was aristocratic, and to embrace monumental art because it was public.
Author Bradley Smith states in Mexico: A History in Art, it’s no wonder art played an important role in the Mexican Revolution (281). He explains that Mexico itself seems to instill a feeling and appreciation for color and design which may spring from the natural environment and its breathtaking mountains, deserts, and seascapes. The land possesses a clarity of light that may add a special brilliance to its awesome vistas. Colors shift during the course of a day from deep violets to brilliant reds or from dull to shining greens. Gleaming white buildings stand out against multi-colored fields and hills of cactus plants.
The mural art was inspired by history and by everyday life. It celebrated the common man, the worker. Its aesthetic value was in its originality and grandeur of conception. Duality, different sides of the same idea, appears again and again as a common theme, as it does in Mexican art of all periods. Light and darkness, ending and beginning, decay becoming growth, death as a part of life. The murals depict highly emotional content in bursts of color and form. They are a passionate testament of a country attempting to rise above degradation to build a life of dignity and of drama.
Fresco
It is intriguing that fresco painting was chosen as the medium. Fresco paintings are a blend of fresh fine plaster, water, and bright pigments applied to a wet wall. Each brushstroke upon application is immediately permanent. The paintings cure into fresh, luminous colors. Frescoes literally last forever, crystallizing through their mineral nature to become part of the wall. Certainly the oldest frescoes, the cave paintings, have outlasted many other forms of painting.
Frescoes are created for all people to see and enjoy. Because many early frescoes depicted universal themes of human experience through symbols and allegories, they did not require extensive knowledge to understand their significance. Today fresco painting is enjoying yet another revival of this almost lost art form. Modern forms still depict human
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