MURALISMO MEXICANO: “MIGUEL HIDALGO ABOLIENDO LA ESCLAVITUD” DE JOSÉ CLEMENTE OROZCO

Recibido: 24-02-2021. Aprobado: 22-03-2021. La época post revolucionaria en México se encuentra marcada por el ambiente político mundial y los intentos de generar una identidad nacional. Esta última fue creada con la necesidad de unificar y moldear un paradigma de temáticas en torno a México; presentando así una imagen de país con culturas ancestrales. La ideología política del siglo XX define dos puntos de vista y paradigmas con respecto al arte. La primera es el liberalismo económico de lado de las grandes potencias occidentales; el segundo pertenece al bloque socialista – comunista, protagonizado por la Unión Soviética. En México, las nuevas ideologías ampliaron las diversas perspectivas hacia el papel del arte: un enfoque utilitarista y político; contra un conceptualismo creciente, el cual dejaba de lado al objeto o la finalidad didáctica.Bajo las características propias de su tiempo, el artista José Clemente Orozco pinta una serie de murales en las escaleras del Palacio de Gobierno de Guadalajara. En el mural central de la obra, se observa un Miguel Hidalgo efectista: un brazo arriba y una antorcha en la otra. El padre de la patria mexicana es graficado de manera particular. Es así como el artista lo rodea de distintos elementos y conceptos. Orozco presenta una interpretación personal del cura de Dolores; la cual, a su vez, responde a las ideas propias del artista hacia el escenario político y social del México post revolucionario. ¿De qué manera es presentado Miguel Hidalgo bajo la perspectiva de José Clemente Orozco? Como hipótesis, señalo que la representación del muralista no es de carácter heroico o hierático; por el contrario, Hidalgo es representado como parte del paradigma político de la post revolución.

Análisis iconográfico: Sacrificio humano de José Clemente Orozco

Este artículo se centra en la investigación sobre la obra “Sacrificio humano” de José Clemente Orozco, cuyos objetivos son: analizar diversas fuentes tanto etnohistóricas como contemporáneas, distinguir las diversas influencias artísticas en la obra de Orozco, analizar la obra con el método iconográfico y comprender lo que la obra Sacrificio Humano busca transmitir a los espectadores. Orozco es resultado de su época, el periodo en el que vivió estuvo plagado de conflictos bélicos, nacionalismos e incertidumbre. La obra Sacrificio humano busca cuestionar la época y la idea de la guerra, en su obra nos confronta y nos dice que a pesar de los grandes avances de la humanidad seguimos matándonos.

President Alemán Urban Housing Project

The Centro Urbano Presidente Alemán, inaugurated in 1949, was a pioneer in more ways than one and can be considered as one of the most transcendent works of Mario Pani. It is the first Mexican high-rise housing complex, where many of the ideals of the European masters, especially Le Corbusier, are gathered together but with a design suited to its place and time. Mario Pani shattered the scheme of the single unit dwelling and proposed a density that allowed the presence of garden areas and integrated diverse services. Moreover, he invited the artist José Clemente Orozco to paint a mural, which he commenced on an undulating wall designed by him.

Ballets without Ballerinas?

The production of socially conscious dance associated with the Lázaro Cárdenas administration suffered a decline when his successor pointed Mexico in a more conservative direction in terms of economic and cultural policy. Ballet temporarily re-emerged as the favored form. Foreign ballet companies figured prominently in the programming decisions of the government’s Palacio de Bellas Arte and the Ballet Theatre’s production of a Mexican-themed ballet, Léonide Massine’s Don Domingo de Don Blas revived Mexican aspirations for increased international exposure through ballet. On a bet, the government even extended its support to the creation of the Ballet de la Ciudad de Mexico, led by Nellie and Gloria Campobello. While initially well-received, the company soon fell into disfavor; the critics could applaud the scenery, created by the likes of the company’s spokesman José Clemente Orozco, but not the dance for which it had been designed.

Mariano Azuela y José Clemente Orozco en diálogo: apuntes sobre las ilustraciones de la primera edición en inglés de Los de abajo

En 1929 se publicó en Estados Unidos Los de abajo, de Mariano Azuela, con ilustraciones de José Clemente Orozco. El pintor mexicano había llegado en 1927 a la Gran Manzana, desde donde le daba a conocer al público estadounidense los desastres revolucionarios a través de una colección de dibujos, grabados y acuarelas, más tarde intitulada México en Revolución. Dado que parecen derivar artísticamente de esa colección, los dibujos con que Orozco ilustra la novela de Azuela no son una mera réplica gráfica de los contenidos del texto, sino que constituyen una visión particular de la lucha armada. El presente trabajo pretende explicar cómo se relacionan las dos visiones artísticas sobre la Revolución que confluyen en la primera edición en inglés de Los de abajo.

Tamayo, Rufino (1899–1991)

A Mexican painter and muralist of indigenous heritage, Rufino Tamayo was one of the most important representatives of figurative abstraction and poetic realism in 20th-century Latin American art. A supporter of the universalistic approach to art, in the late 1940s he started a controversy—the so called ‘‘polémica Tamayo’’—by positioning himself against the classical Mexican school and its ‘‘Big Three,’’ the muralists José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and Alfaro Siqueiros. Contrary to the stress they put on art as political, Tamayo focused on its poetic and emotional aspects. Tamayo’s art is based both on Mexican figurative traditions (characterized by the rigor and geometry of pre-Hispanic sculpture and its imaginative and magical character), and on the influence of European and North American avant-garde movements, especially Impressionism, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. His sensibility for nature and spirituality, his interest in ordinary people, and his ability to synthesize different pictorial languages with Mexican folk art and beliefs, have made him a very popular artist, nationally and internationally. Throughout his career Tamayo directed his effort ‘‘towards the salvation of painting, the preservation of its purity and the perpetuation of its mission as translator of the world’’ (Paz 1985: 23).

Mexican Muralism (c. 1920–1940)

The Mexican Muralist movement was a nationalistic movement that aimed at producing an official modern art form distinct from European traditions, thus embracing and clearly expressing a unique Mexican cultural and social identity. Shortly after the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), expatriate Mexican artists were summoned to return to the country. They were charged with creating public murals on government buildings, which would visually communicate unifying ideals to a largely illiterate population. Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, known collectively as Los Tres Grandes or The Great Three, were key figures in the movement. The architectural aspect of the large murals created during this period underscores the government’s and artists’ belief in art as a social and ideological tool, and reflects a desire to establish permanent expressions of a national identity. The works embraced and elevated mural painting in Mexico from a popular form to a form of high art. Further, the movement embodied social ideals manifested in the muralists’ work alongside carpenters, plasterers, and other laborers. The 1930s saw the solidification of a leftist national discourse, but by the 1940s, the major political developments in Mexico and Europe resulted in significant redefinition of this ideology, and Mexican Muralism became out-dated.

Yllanes, Alejandro Mario (1913–1960)

Alejandro Mario Yllanes was a Bolivian Aymara painter, engraver, and muralist. His art career began with an exhibition in his hometown of Oruro in 1930, when he was nineteen years old. Shortly afterwards he moved to La Paz, where he worked as an illustrator for the periodical Semana Grafica, during which time he became acquainted with the artists Arturo Borda and Cecilio Guzmán de Rojas. All three Bolivian artists were influenced by the so-called indigenism or indigenismo movement, which gained momentum in Latin America from the 1920s onwards. The movement was characterized by the promotion of national pride and a nostalgic celebration of the Inca and pre-Columbian past, as reflected in literature and the visual arts. Yllanes was driven by a desire to encourage a spirit of community amongst the native Bolivians, and his works often portray locals in traditional Andean dress, carrying out pre-conquest rituals and customs. His incorporation of styles and techniques influenced by Post-Impressionism, Cubism, and Mexican Muralism show his engagement with modernist trends. The latter movement was headed by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Their socio-political art—inspired by the Mexican Revolution—fueled Yllanes’s own work, which he combined with a rootedness to local narrative and materials.

Posada, José Guadalupe (1852–1913)

A seminal printmaker of Mexico City at the turn of the twentieth century, José Guadalupe Posada is most recognizable for his calaveras, images of skulls and skeletons that satirized politicians, aristocrats, and corruption in Mexican society. Though he received little acclaim or monetary success during his lifetime, Posada’s work was rediscovered by the Mexican avant-garde in the early 1920s, including Jean Charlot, Dr. Atl, Diego Rivera, and José Clemente Orozco. For these artists, Posada represented an artistic precedent outside of the European tradition, and a link between the images of Pre-Columbian art and their own. The most famous of the calaveras is a character Posada called La Catrina, whose image is ubiquitous in pop-cultural imagery produced for the Day of the Dead.