Here in Esteli, the Muralist Collective David Alfaro Siqueiros, is a well-known group of men and women who paint beautiful figurative and narrative images about social campaigns and messages for public awareness. Yesterday, Julio Moreno, led a tour with us through the halls of the Emergency room of the city. Impressive floor-to-ceiling paintings of women's public health care system told stories of marvelous midwives, work by female doctors, and mobile healthcare vans that take the healthcare system to rural areas of Esteli. While I knew the style and mission of the Muralist Collective, I realized I still didn't know much about the Mexican muralist who they're named after, David Alfaro Siqueiros. Only earlier this year, I saw this master's work for the first time at the MOMA in NYC.
Siqueiros is a respected founder of the Muralist Movement with Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco; otherwise known as "Los Tres Grandes." Growing up during the Mexican Revolution, Siqueiros was a privileged college student and questioned the role of art, criticized the Mexican government, and defended the rights of the indigenous and the poor through his writings, art and massive murals like the one above.
For over 150 years, Siqueiros has shaped the philosophy on the role of art, artists, the state, and of the bourgeoisie. In the mural above, I am thinking about yesterday's assignment that I gave during our exchange with the muralists: to draw a section of Esteli's finest murals in the hospital and create a corresponding mural that would face it. In the image above, I think of my home in Baltimore and see Freddie Gray's broken body, help up by the Black community of Sandtown, West Baltimore. I see his family and friends carrying him in honor of his life as a funeral procession as well as a protest to police brutality. Towards the back of the protestors, I see faces becoming whiter and browner, representing the myriad voices of others who stood up for his life and the lives of countless victims. I see the support of the entire country, the widespread campaign against killer cops.
1 comment:
Siqueiros is one of my favorites. Not only was he one of the great muralists of La Revolucion Mexicana, known for his dark psychedelic social realist works that often times utilizied industrial paints and materials, he lived the politics of his art. Organized his fellow art students before the uprising against Porfirio Diaz, fought in the Revolution(even if he eventually ended up supporting the less idealistic Carranza/ Obregan faction), organized the Syndicato of Revolutionary Mexican Painters, Sculptors and Engraver and chaffed the new revolutionary government, volunteered and fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War, organized support for their struggle in Europe and eventually fought to have Spanish refugees granted asylum in Cardenas's Mexico. Resisted the conservative drift of the Mateos administration of the late 50s and their crackdown on the trade unions. Was eventually arrested for his resistance and imprisoned for 8 years before being released before his death in 1974. Though his unsufferable Stalinism had blindspots and his attempted plot to kill Russian Revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who was granted Asylum in Mexico in the 30s, is unforgiveable in my opinion, Siqueiros is one of the most badass artists ever.
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