Mexican Murals - Mural Movement

Mural Movement

In 1921, after the end of the Revolution, José Vasconcelos was appointed to head the Secretaría de Educación Pública. At the time, most of the Mexican population was illiterate and the government needed a way to promote the ideals of the Mexican Revolution. It was Vasconcelos’ idea have a government-backed mural program for this purpose. Similar to mural use in the pre Hispanic period and during the colonial period, the purpose of these murals were not simply aesthetic, but social, to promote certain ideals. These ideals or principles were to glorify the Mexican Revolution and the identity of Mexico as a mestizo nation, with the indigenous promoted as well as the Spanish. The government began to hire the country’s best artists to paint murals, calling some of them home from Europe including Diego Rivera. These initial muralists included Dr. Atl, Ramón Alva de la Canal and others but the main three would be David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera. His time as secretary was short but it set how muralism would develop. His image was painted on a tempera mural in 1921 by Roberto Montenegro, but this was short lived. His successor at the Secretaría de Educación Pública ordered it painted out. The muralists differed in style and temperament, but all believed that art was for the education and betterment of the people. This was behind their acceptance of these commissions as well as their creation of the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors.

The first government sponsored mural project was on the three levels of interior walls of the old San Ildefonso College, at that time used for the Escuela National Preparatoria. However, most of the murals in the Escuela National Preparatoria were done by José Clemente Orozco with themes of a mestizo Mexico, the ideas of renovation and the tragedies of the Revolution. This project was followed by the Palacio Nacional, the interior walls of the Palacio de Bellas Artes, the Escuela Nacional de Chapingo the Escuela Nacional de Medicina and the Secretaria de Educación Pública building among many others.

The movement was strongest from the 1920s to the 1950s, which corresponded to the country’s transformation from a mostly rural and mostly illiterate society to an industrialized one. While today they are part of Mexico’s identity, at the time they were controversial, especially those with socialist messages plastered on centuries-old colonial buildings. One of the basic underpinnings of the nascence of a post revolutionary Mexican art was that it should be public, available to the citizenry and above all not the province of a few wealthy collectors. The great societal upheaval made the concept possible as well as a lack of relatively wealthy middle class to support the arts. On this, the painters and the government agreed. One other point of agreement was that artists should have complete freedom of expression. This would lead to another element added to the murals over their development. In addition to the original ideas of a reconstructed Mexico and the elevation of Mexico’s indigenous and rural identity, many of the muralists, including the three main painters, also included elements of Marxism, especially the struggle of the working class against oppression.