David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros, December 29, 1896, in Mexico City - January 6, 1974, in Cuernavaca, Morelos) was a Mexican social realist painter, known for his large murals in fresco. He, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco established Mexican Muralism. He was also a Stalinist and member of the Mexican Communist Party who participated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky in May 1940.
His surname was Alfaro; like another eminent 20th century painter, Pablo Ruíz y Picasso, Siqueiros went by his mother's surname. It was long believed that he was born in Camargo, Chihuahua, but in 2003 it was proven that he had actually been born in the capital city and grew up in Irapuato, Guanajuato, from at least age six. The discovery of his birth certificate, made by a Mexican art curator, was announced the following year by art critic Raquel Tibol, who was renowned as the leading authority on Mexican Muralism and who had been a close acquaintance of Siqueiros. He replaced his personal name with "David" after his first wife took to calling him that admiringly in allusion to Michelangelo's statue, David. Another factual confusion involves which year he was born. He was born in 1896, but many sources give 1898 or 1899.
Read more about David Alfaro Siqueiros: Youth, Early Art and Politics, Artistic Career, Later Life and Works, Style
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“To use an obsolete Latin word, I might say, Ex Oriente lux; ex Oriente FRUX. From the East light; from the West fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)