By Natalie Taylor
David Alfaro Siqueiros is considered one of the three major Mexican muralists, along with Diego Rivera and Jose Clemente Orozco. Born in Mexico City on December 29, 1896, his rebel spirit came to light at an early age. He credits his older sister for this, because she paved the way by challenging their father’s religious orthodoxy. When Siqueiros was 15, he participated in a student strike against the school director. This was his baptism in confrontations with authorities, and the beginning of a frenetic life characterized by imprisonment, exiles, and battles with different political factions, both in Mexico, and abroad. Walls became his passion and his curse; he used them to paint his amazing murals, but frequently found himself surrounded by them inside prison cells.
He continued his studies at the School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. But when he turned 18, he and several other students joined Venustiano Carranza to fight against the government of Victoriano Huerta. Once Carranza became president, Siqueiros continued fighting against rebel forces led by Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata, who opposed Carranza. Those battles took him across Mexico, and he discovered his native land, and its culture during these trips. He saw social injustice, poverty, and the ignorance of the masses; he became involved with labor unions to help the workers.
In 1919, Siqueiros traveled to Paris where he was exposed to cubism, and was greatly influenced by the large blocks of intense colors used by Cézanne. In Paris, he met and struck up a friendship with Diego Rivera, with whom he traveled to Italy to study fresco technique, to use on murals.
Political ideology and art were fully intertwined for Siqueiros; his murals became his visual manifestos. He sought a style that would bridge native Mexican and universal art; public art that would serve to educate the masses. His murals became more and more political, with overt Communist messages. This eventually led to his exile in the early 1930s. In 1932 he went to Los Angeles to continue his career in muralism, then to New York where he ran a political art workshop. The young Jackson Pollock attended the workshop, and some have credited Siqueiros for teaching Pollock the drip and pour techniques the painter later used. Siqueiros only lasted one year in his workshop, because once again he became involved in politics—this time, he left for Spain to fight against Franco’s Fascist regime.
Back in Mexico City, he was involved in an assassination attempt. He, and several other conspirators approached Leon Trotsky’s house, and shot over 200 bullets, but they missed the Russian leader. Siqueiros was apparently a much better artist than a marksman. Trotsky, however, only lived a few months after the attempt; he was killed with an ice pick on the streets of Mexico City. Siqueiros had to leave the country, and went to Chile, where the poet Pablo Neruda had arranged for him to paint a mural.
In 1948, Siqueiros came to teach mural painting in the Escuela de Bellas Artes in San Miguel de Allende. In the former convent’s dining hall, he and some 40 students worked on a room-encompassing mural to honor Ignacio Allende—native son, and leader of Mexico’s War of Independence. Angry disputes with the art academy’s director, led to a walk out by Siqueiros and his disciples, leaving the work unfinished. They say that when the artist left the room, he locked the doors behind him. When opened ten years later, the drop cloth still lay there, along with all the dried paints and brushes. Siqueiros never returned to complete this work; he died on January 6, 1974. He donated his house in Polanco, which has been converted into a Museum of Mural Painting Composition.
There are numerous examples of Siqueiros’ monumental murals, in Mexico City, the US, and elsewhere. Paintings in brilliant colors, incredible perspective, and so dynamic, the figures seem to leap from the walls. They reflect his ideals and tell the stories of human struggles to overcome authoritarian, capitalist rule, and to be equally represented. Joseph Freeman, a contemporary poet, best describes Siqueiros. He says he was a leader “of the poor who plant, the poor who burrow under the earth in field and mine.” Siqueiros battled his entire life for those people; wearing “an old torn sweater, the pockets always empty.” He was a champion for the common man, and a great artist, who left his unfinished mural in our city for us to appreciate and admire. Natalie Taylor: BA in English Lit and Journalism, Loyola University, Chicago, 1995. MFA in Creative Writing, Vermont College, Montpelier, VT, 1999. Published writer, editor, journalist. Spanish teacher in the US, English teacher in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Translator. www.natalietaylor.org Contact: tangonata@gmail.com
