David Alfaro Siqueiros Totally Explained

Everything about David Alfaro Siqueiros totally explained

José David Alfaro Siqueiros (December 29, 1896 in Camargo, Chihuahua, Mexico - January 6, 1974 in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico) was a social realist painter (muralist), and also a Stalinist, known for large murals in fresco that established the "Mexican Mural Renaissance" together with work by Diego Rivera, Orozco, and others.

Summary

His notable projects include his collaborative mural at the Mexican Electricians' Union (1939-40), From Porfiriato to the Revolution at the Museum of National History (1957-55), March of Humanity and the Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros on Avenida Insurgentes (1965-71), and his role in procuring mural commissions for artists on the University City campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1950s Mexico City. Siqueiros was one of "the big three" Mexican muralists, lead by Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. His art directly reflected the time period in which he flourished as an artist. His art was deeply rooted in the Spanish Civil War and theMexican Revolution, a violent and chaotic period in Mexican history in which various social and political factions fought for recognition and power. The period from the 1920s to the 1950s is known as the Mexican Mural Renaissance, and Siqueiros was active in the attempt to create an art that was at once Mexican and universal. From 1919 to 1922 he traveled to Belgium, France, Italy, and Spain to study art. Throughout his career he traveled internationally, promoting his version of muralism in the United States, South America (including Uruguay, Argentina and Chile), Cuba, Europe, and the Soviet Union. In 1966 he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize.
Political activism was an important piece of Siqueiros' life. A self-proclaimed Marxist, he was at times both the favorite and the enemy of the Mexican Communist Party. He was exiled twice from Mexico, once in 1932 and again in 1940, following his assassination attempt on Leon Trotsky.

Youth

Siqueiros was born the second of three children in Chihuahua, Mexico, in 1896. His father, Cipriano Alfaro, was well-to-do, and was a descendant of Felipe Alfaro of Portugal. His mother, Teresa Siqueiros, came from a Chihuahua family of musicians, actors, and poets. Siqueiros had two siblings: a sister, Luz, three years older, and a brother Chucho, one year younger. David was two years old when his mother died and his father sent the children to live with their paternal grandparents. Siete Filos, David’s grandfather, would have an especially strong role in his upbringing. However, Cipriano, a devout Catholic, disapproved with the way that his parents had been raising the children in the countryside, so in 1907 he brought them back to live with him in Mexico City.
There David attended a religious school. He credits his first rebellious influence to his sister, who had resisted their father’s religious orthodoxy. Around this time, David was also exposed to new political ideas, mainly along the lines of anarcho-syndicalism. One such political theorist was Dr. Atl, who published a manifesto in 1906 calling for Mexican artists to develop a national art and look to ancient indigenous cultures for inspiration. The manifesto also claimed that a “constructive spirit” is essential to meaningful art, which rises above mere decoration or false, fantastical themes. Through this style, Siqueiros hoped to create a style that would bridge national and universal art. In his work as well as his writing, Siqueiros sought a social realism that at once hailed the proletariat peoples of Mexico and the world while avoiding the clichés of trendy “Primitivism” and “Indianism". But as the union became ever more critical of the revolutionary government, which hadn't instituted the promised reforms, its members faced new threats to cut funding for their art and the paper. A feud within the union over whether to cease publishing El Machete or lose financial support for the mural projects left Siqueiros at the forefront, as Rivera left in protest of the decision to uphold politics over artistic opportunity. Despite being let go from his “teaching” post under the Department of Education in 1925, Siqueiros remained deeply entrenched in labor activities, in the union as well as the Mexican Communist Party, until he was jailed and eventually exiled in the early 1930s. In 1932, he led an exhibition and conference entitled “Rectifications on Mexican Muralism” at the gallery of the Spanish Casino in Taxco, Mexico. Painting fresco on an outside wall – visible to passersby as well as intentional viewers – forced Siqueiros to reconsider his methodology as a muralist. He wanted the image – a red-shirted orator captivating a group of women on the street – to be accessible from multiple angles. Instead of just constructing “an enlarged easel painting,” He realized that the mural “must conform to the normal transit of a spectator.” Yet by the 1950s, Siqueiros returned to accepting commissions from what he considered a “progressive” Mexican state, rather than painting for galleries or private patrons. Siqueiros was eventually arrested in 1960 for supposedly inciting a May Day riot, though the charges were commonly known to be false. Numerous protests ensued, even including an appeal by well-known artists and writers in a New York Times ad in 1961. Unjustly imprisoned, Siqueiros continued to paint, and his works continued to sell. He was finally released in spring of 1964.
His interest in the human form developed at the Academy in Mexico City. His accentuation of the angles of the body, its muscles and joints, can be seen throughout his career in his portrayal of the strong revolutionary body. In addition, many works, especially in the 1930s, prominently feature hands, which could be interpreted as another heroic symbol of proletarian strength through work: his self portrait in prison (El Coronelazo, 1945, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City), Our Present Image (1947, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico), New Democracy (1944, Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico City), and even his series on working class women, such as The Sob.

Selected Other Works

Proletarian Mother, 1929, Museum of Modern Art, Mexico
Zapata (lithograph), 1930, Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art
Zapata (oil painting), 1931, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian, Washington, D.C.
War, 1939, Philadelphia Museum of Art
Jose Clemente Orozco, 1947, Carillo Gil Museum, Mexico City
Cain in the United States, 1947, Carillo Gil Museum, Mexico city
For Complete Social Security of All Mexicans, 1953-36, Hospital de La Raza, Mexico City

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