mexico, painting, cardenas

[whoknows]

Something on the Satlinist architecture thread reminded me of Siquoeiros. And I started wondering who the hell commistioned all those hammer and sickels we see here and there in Rivera and the other communist image filled art made during Cardenas's six years.

Any one got an oppinion. observation. fav. painting you just want to gush about? It's all good. How about the contracts made with the artist? that must sound juicey to anyone who's studied the Italian renassance.
I suppect a lot of us here are Americans and Mexican politics in the '30's are something the school teachers are told to keep in the closet.

[Faceless]

I know rivera was commissioned by the rockefeller family to paint a mural on "human progress". He included a picture of Lenin in it, and they painted over it :P legend

[whoknows]

Have you seen reproductions of "Human Progress" which is I believe "Man at the Crossroads". it's quite something. But I believe that the plaster it was painted on was actually scraped off the wall so that it could never be restored. But there seems to be a copy or variation of it at a university in Mexico.
Foregive me but I'm not well perpared to respond to you at the mommet so will ask you to go on an adventure. I've tried to find a web site for you to go to quickly and easily but not finding that try this book, "Mexican Muralists: Orozco, Rivera, Siqueiros" by Desmond Rochfort. Look for the murals from which the cover art was taken. But then study the Siqueiros. Wikkipedia has a nice short entery for Siqueiros.
the web might let you see El Arsenal by Rivera and some of the murals in the Presidential Palais in Mexico City.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Have you seen reproductions of "Human Progress" which is I believe "Man at the Crossroads". it's quite something. But I believe that the plaster it was painted on was actually scraped off the wall so that it could never be restored. But there seems to be a copy or variation of it at a university in Mexico.

"Man at the crossroads" is also painted in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

The original was destroyed after Rivera refused Rockefeller's orders to cover Lenin's face with the face of an anonymous worker.

[Tower of Bebel]

Wasn't it the same mural that also had Trotsky on it? With the workers and the red flag?

[whoknows]

Yes it is and it also has syphillis bacteria foating above Rockafeller's head. But you mustn't stop with this one.
Rivera said, 'Siqueiros talks, Rivera paints'
and Rivera really did, walls and walls. I would love to put details here for you but am a bit unsure of fair useage laws.
David Siqueiros talked, he was a determned union oranizer and seems to have been pro-stalin, at any rate he was charged with but exonerated in a machine gun and granade attack on Trotsky's home. Irronicly both men where living in Mexico by the grace and favor of president Cardenas, the man who nationalized Mexican oil production. The USA did not have a CIA back then to oust him so Cardenas got away with it. And of course Siqueiros was a Republican officer during the Spanish civil war after droping out of art school to fight Huerta in 1913.
But when he wasn't fighting or organising or writting (see Tress Llamaniento. . . , A manifesto for artists in the americas) Siqueiros did paint and in a style much more radical than Rivera. There is more fire passion and directness in Siqueiros. May I refer you to "Echo of a Scream" 1937 and most of all "the Protrait of the Bousgeoisie" painted in the stair well of the headquarters building of the Mexican Electrical Workers Union.
"without the Revoulution, there would have been no Mexican painting."
---David Siqueiros