David
Alfaro Siqueiros
Source: Encyclopedia.com
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), one of the great Mexican
mural painters, introduced technical innovations in his murals and easel
paintings.
David Alfaro Siqueiros was born in Chihuahua. He was educated
at the National School of Fine Arts, Mexico City, and did further study in
Spain, Italy, and France. He served as an officer in Venustiano Carranza's army
(1910-1916) and as military attachéin Paris (1917).
As one of the artists who collaborated in painting the murals
for the staircase at the National Preparatory School, Mexico City (1922),
Siqueiros became one of the founders of the mural movement in Mexico. He served
as secretary general of the Painter's Syndicate and became one of the editors
of its publication, El machete. With Amado de la Cueva he organized the
Alliance of Painters in Guadalajara in 1925, and there he worked with De la
Cueva and Carlos Orozco on decorations for the University of Guadalajara.
Siqueiros served as a representative of various workers' organizations to
Russia in 1928 and as a delegate to workers' meetings in South America in 1929.
In 1931 he was exiled to Taxco for political reasons.
Siqueiros was a professor at the Chouinard School of Art, Los
Angeles (1932-1933), where he developed new technical processes for outdoor
murals, including the use of airbrushes to apply paint. Beginning in 1934 he
devoted himself more and more to easel painting and carried out various
experiments with Duco paint, for example, Echo of a Scream (1937).
Siqueiros was a delegate from the Congress of Mexican Artists
to the Congress of Revolutionary Artists in New York City in 1936, and there he
established a school in which he set forth his revolutionary artistic ideas. In
1937 he joined the Spanish Republican Army. From 1939 to 1944 he resided in
Cuba and Chile.
The principal works by Siqueiros in Mexico City are the Trial
of Fascism in the Electrical Workers Union building (1939), Cuauhtémoc against
the Myth in Sonora No. 9 (1944), New Democracy in the Palace of Fine Arts
(1945), Patricians and Patricides in the former Customs House (1945), Ascent of
Culture in the National University of Mexico (1952-1956), and Future Victory of
Medical ScienceAgainst Cancer in the Medical Center (1958). His best-known
mural outside Mexico City, Death to the Invader, is in Chillán, Chile
(1941-1942).
From 1960 to 1964 Siqueiros was imprisoned by the Mexican
government for the crime of "social dissolution," but later he
completed a mural commissioned by the Mexican government at Chapultepec Castle.
In 1969 he spoke at the First National Painting Contest, in which some 7,000
artists from all parts of Mexico participated.
His next major work was The March of Humanity on the Congress
Hall of Mexico City, one of the first buildings ever built specifically to
house a mural. Incorporating different materials and methods, it united
architecture, sculpture, and painting in what was called "a baroque and
futuristic extrapolation of realism." In 1968 he became president of the
Academy of Arts in Mexico City. A retrospective of his work was shown at the
Center for Inter-American Relations, and a three-dimensional mural was
permanently installed in the Siqueiros Center in Mexico City.
Murals art works
David Siqueiros self portrait 1945
With affection,
With affection,
Ruben
No comments:
Post a Comment