Notes on Diego Rivera, Frida
Kahlo, and Latin American Muralism
(1910
– Present)
Muralism is the term used to
categorize the creation of a mural as a work of art placed on a wall or
ceiling and applied by a varied of techniques. Often, but not always, a mural
artwork is integrated into architectural spaces that use the construction space
as an element of the mural itself. Techniques include fresco (water soluble
paints with a lime wash) and marouflage (placing a painted on canvas onto a
wall with an adhesive).
Murals of various kinds have
existed from prehistory to the present. Notice, for example the cave art at
Altamira, Spain (18,000 bce), and
Lascaux, France (24,000 bce).
Egyptian tombs (3000 bce), Minoan
(Greek, 1650 bce), and Roman palaces
(200 bce to 400 ce). In the Middle Ages murals were
painted into dry plaster on monastery and church walls. One of the greatest of
European muralists was Michelangelo and his Sistine Chapel ceiling in the
Vatican.
Perhaps most significant, is the
explosion of muralism in the twentieth-century art movement in Mexico, which
movement is known as Mexican muralism. Many Mexican artists created murals,
especially from the end of the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920) until the
present. It is important to recall that muralism was a major feature of
pre-Columbian Mexico and Mesoamerica from the Mayas to the Aztecs. Furthermore,
Mexican muralism spread to Chicano art in the 1960s to the present and to other
places throughout Latin America. In Mexico, mural art was centered on progressive
social, political, and educational purposes in a manner not dissimilar to the
purpose of stained glass windows in European Gothic cathedrals. Hence, Latin American
murals have been—deliberately—controversial. Among many examples, in 1948, the
Colombian government commissioned Santiuago Martínez Delgado to create a mural
about the Cúcuta Congress in 1821 at which Simón Bolívar was elected president
of the newly founded nation of Gran Colombia. This mural, which angered
liberals, and the assassination of Jorge Eliécer Gaitán, the liberal presidential
candidate, were the fuse that resulted in the bogotazo of 1948 in Bogotá, a
massive riot that ended with vast destruction of the capital itself.
Diego
Rivera
1886-1957 For comments about his life and a digital show of a selection
of his works, see: => Diego Rivera Show.
Frida
Kahlo
1907-1954 For comments about her life and a digital show of a selection
of her works, see: => Frida Kahlo Show.
Other
Mexican Muralists: 1910-1950
1920-1973 For murals by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1973), Orozco, and
Diego Rivera in the Palacio de Bellas Artes (
For
murals by Juan O'Gorman on the outside walls of the library building at
Alberto
Gálvez Suárez
1905-1973 For comments about her life and a digital show of a selection
of his Guatemalan murals, see: => Gálvez Suárez Tour.
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