Source: WTL photograph© at the Special Exhibition of "Paint the Revolution: Mexican Modernism 1910 - 1950," at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, December 13, 2016.
Image: "Peasants" (1913), by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974). Pastel on paper.
Comments: Siqueiros was very young when he painted this canvas during the early years of the Mexican Revolution. Throughout this exhibition you will see a number of paintings of a very different style and content, which are the kind of dramatic and violent scence for which he is most famous (also see: => the pages on Mexican muralists' works in the Palacio de Bellas Artes. As a youth, Siqueiros was influenced by Dr. Atl, a Mexican political theorist, who in 1906 wrote a kind of anarcho-syndicalist manifesto in which he urged Mexican artists to turn away from European models and themes and rather to focus on the indigenous peoples and cultures of Mexico. In 1911, two years before he produced this painting, he joined a student strike at the grand and official Academy of San Carlos and its National Academy of Fine Arts. The result of the students' protest was the creation of the so-called "open-air academy" of Santa Anita in Mexico City's Iztacalco neighborhood. (For more about Siqueiros, see his later paintings in this textbook.)
For other paintings and murals by Siqueiros in this series on Mexican Modern art, see: => #4; => #16; => #17; => #27; => #29.
Humanities Questions: (A) Knowing that Siqueiros was 17 years old when he created this painting, what is your feeling about it in and of itself; that is, as in Page 3, disregarding the socio-historical context? (Refer to comments in Page 3 to answer this question.)