ART AND

REVOLUTION

by

DAVID ALFARO SIQUEIROS

1975
LAWRENCE AND WISHART
LONDON
 Contents

1. Introduction: Some Q.uestions ahOUl Mural Art in

ThU colltchon oj IIrlllltS, JPt~S and Imas u publiJJInl by
Q1Ttmgmtnll willi EdlllMJ SmallJ, Pam, and u b4Jttl on tiIt,r
wlIutilJlt TArt II La RtvoiuIwn". DaVId A SUjNnrlJJ, Poru
1973. Tilt £nglulr IrtulJlalllJlt has ~m moot Jram fht lJngmoi
Spo:1W!r uxlJ by S,llIla Collis
Engli$h translations copyright 10 Sylvia Calles, 1975
ISBN 0 85315 3~9 9 American Painters and Sculptors
Pnnt,d in Grtal Britain b,
Tnt Camtlol. Prw Ud, SOlJ.lhampltm
Mexico 7
Extra£!J from ammage mt1 by SilflUiroJ.from tM Remand
PrU01l of 1M Federal. Dutrici to lhe delegates ojlhe XlV
General AJJembly oJlhe InlematianaJ ASJociaIion oj Arl
Coon, Memo,July. 1952
2. The Historical Process of Modern Mexican Painting 10
Outline oj a lecture on December lolh, /947. at the
Palace afFine Arts, Mexico City
3· A New Direction for the New Generation of
SlO
Drafted by SiqueiroJ and published in the first and only
number oj the 17U'llJal.ine Vida Americana, edited by
himJelf, in Barcelona, Spain, 1921
4· A Declaration of Social, Political and Aesthetic
Principles 24
Drafted by SiqueiroJ in 1912 and sigmd by alL the
mtmhen ojtJu Syndicate ojTechnUal Workers, Paimers
and ScuJP'OfJ
5· New Thoughts on the Plastic Arts in Mexico .i6
Lecture tkJiTHred on the occasion oj tJte cJoJur~ oj the
exhibition oj hiJ paintingJ in the Casino Espand GoJJery.
MexUo Cit]. February loth, 19P
6. What "Plastic Exercise" is and how it was done 38
FrQl11 tJte explanatory leaflet pubLuhLd in conntction with
the unvriling oJthe mural "Plastic Exerrue" in December,
I9JJ
1· Towards a Transformacion of me Plastic Ans 45
Plans Jar a manifesto an,d J'udy programmeJar .Jtudio~
Jchooh oj painting and Jculpture, wriUen by SiqueiroJ in
New York, 19)4
8. Letter from the Front Line in Spain To Man Tema 4-9
Lean. de ALberti, ApriL 27th, 19J8
Art snd Revolution
9. War time, War art
Maniftsto first published in the mogazint Forma.,
Samit2go, Chilt. FtbruatJ, 1943
In
10. Jose Clemente Orozco, lhe formal precursor of our
painting 55
Articlt first pubf.iJMd in Dtctmbn 1944, in tlu magaunt
Hoy in Mtxico Cit,
II. All, the Political and TheoreticaJ Precursor
From tltt booll Ours is me Only Way, Mtxuo, 194;
12. Rivera, me First Pranical Exponent of our An
From thtbooll Ours is the Only Way, MeXIco, 194;
Ig. The Function of the Photograph
Articlt in the nuzgazine Hoy, Mexico, 194;
14. National Cinema; True or False?
Article in the Maga7.ine Asi, Mexico, 1945
15. The Creed of David Alfaro Siqueiros
No1ional Fine Arts Institute, Mexico, 1947
16. Towards a New Integral Art
Articu in the maga:tine Espacios, Mexico, 1948
17. Plastic integration in the University City
LLtln to the. architect Carlos !.Aw, Mexico, 195 I
18. Chapters from the book How to Painl a Mural
19. Towards Realism in the Plastic Arts
Lecturt delivered at the Palau ~ Fine Arts, Mexico Cil"
juiy, 1954
20. The Salutary Presence of Mexican Art in Paris
Commmls on an artit:le by Philippe Soupault, in a lecture
at tk Palace oj Fine Arts, Augwt, 19-'4
21. Open Letter to Soviet Painters, SculplOrs and
Engravers
Read at flu rectption givenJor him by the Sovitt Acadtmy
of Arl, Octobtr 17th, 19-'5
22. Plastic ArtS and Revolution in Latin America
ExtractJ from a lecture at 1M Caracas Cenlral University,
Vennuela,january 9th, 1960
23. Precepts of David Alfaro Siqueiros
53
1
Introduction: Some Questions
about Mural Art in Mexico
IExtrBCls from a message sent from the Remand Prison ollhe Federal
68 Districi 10 the delegates of the XIV General Assemblv of the
International Association of Arts CrilicS. held in Mexico. July 1962J
73
79
84
9.:2
Mural painting and the poster were revived in Mexico rrom
94 J9~2 onwards, from causes going back to the Mexican
revolution of 191 o. The muralist movememalmost coincided in
99 time with the first indications of a certain return LO Ilgure-
paiming in European art with Picasso's "monstrous" period
102 which came at the end of lhe period orpure cubism. Mexican an
13 8 evolved, however, in a completely opposite direction.
There was no comparable phenomenon in any other country.
There were isolated mural paimers who showed a sporadic
145 interest in the technique, but there was no collective movement,
nor was there an}' attempt to create one.
Mexico was the only modern country in which a group of
artists saw fit to reconstruCt the practice of mural painting in all
17 6 its essential theoretical and practical fundamentals, including
composition, materials and tools. It should be nOled that, on
the whole, European paimers, including those who rook part in
18 3 movements which acquired greater ronnal imponance, had no
inkling of these matters.
Mexico has produced the only important mural experiment
19 1 of our times. This has had international repercussions. And not
only the plastic arcs of today. but those of the future, will be
affected by its principles and theories.
B Art and Revolution
In my opmlon mural an cannOi be judged on either a
national or international scale by me canons of movable an, of
easel painting, of painting in its function of private pleasure,
because our art is public, for the multitudes, and it speaks a
different social language. with its own particular st)'le and form.
II is in fact a different branch of an and requires a different
mental structure. And we must have a scientific basis for
studying itsexprcssions both individually and collectively.
Now !.hat you are actually here in the binhplace of this
movement, you will be able (0 appreciate for yourselves its
geography, history and itS humanity. its socia-political
environmemand you can thus judge for yourselves this unusual
art form, this collective work of an in which individual
characteristics have been respected, because it was impOSSible
not to do so.
I would like to suggest the following questions to you:
1. Is Mexican contemporary painting, and in particular mural
painting, merely a greater or lesser branch of the formal
tendencies of modem Western art?
2. Is it of any importance that contemporary Mexican mural
painters have adopted mural painting in preference (O orner
types of painting, whereas painters from the rest of the world
have gone in the opposite direction and opted for easel painting
and movable an?
3. Should it be considered of importance that contemporary
Mexica.n painting has a definite ideological, and at times frankly
political coment, in direct conrrast to the vehemently
maimainro apoliticism of European painting and in general of
contemporary Western culture?
4. Do different pictorial techniques give rise to differences and
contrasts both in theory and in practice?
5· Can any definite difference be ascribed to the fact that
contemporary an tendencies have evolved and developed in
imperialist countries, while Mexico is a country whose eco-
namy and culture are semi-colonial?
6. We Mexican muralists have done no more than repeat the
principles and practice of the Renaissance masters. In view of
Questions about MuratArt 9
our limitations as a new nation, should our effort be judged
merely as a revival oflhe Renaissance?
In my opinion, the most practical and objective way to answer
these questiom would be to follow the chronological
development of our movement with its ups and downs,
advances and retreats, its theory and its practice, from the first
murals painted in the fonner convem ofSt. Peter and St. Paul, in
the National Preparatory School, to the most recently painted
murals.
In m)' opinion, gentlemen, your task in Mexico will nOI only
be to make a further study of ancient Mexican art, which,
beautiful as it is, has already been extensively studied. At this
time it is far more imponam, more difficult and more urgent,
that you should. in a collegiate body, and with the aid of
Mexican art critics, study Mexican mural an in depth and make
your own scientific and emotional appraisal ofit. I t is the art ofa
coumry which is not yet truly independem either politically or
economically, but which, nevenheless, has been able to show to
the world its own very valuable experiments in the field of
plastic arts.
There is no justification for nOI doing this and for taking
refuge in a study of archaeology or commercial art. World
opinion is ....-airing to hear what you think of the living an of
Mexico.

2 precedes a new an movement.
The Historical Process of
Modern Mexican Painting
(Oullin. of a kK:ru,. delivered on December 10th. 1947 ,It the P,I!lce of
An. Arts. Mexico Cityl
What political, formal and technical progress has there been in
Mexican an?
Modern Mexican painting i.s the first manifestation of Latin
American art to find an important place in the ranks of world
culture.
During the last years of the Porfirio Diaz dictalOf.ship.
Mexican mentality, economy and politics were ryp,cally
colonial. They had eyes only for the an ~r E.urope ~nd
particularly for the art of Paris. There was ~o Sign o~ rebelhon
against the artistic capital, not even the famtest desire for the
right to participate in the international cultural movement on a
national basis.
About 1904 or 1906 we began to see a f~ hopeful signs. On
his return from Europe. Dr. Au began a proselytising campaign,
as yet without concrete theoretical Connulations. in favour of
mural painting and a more Mexican ~ppToach to ar.t.. .
At mat time, At! was a Spanish-Itahan type ofsoclahst, I.e. an
anarcho-syndicalisl. His interest in aesthetics began ~t~~o~t t~e
time that the Houseofthe International Worker was lOluaung Its
political activities against the oligarchic dictatorship of Po~rio
Diaz. The first pictures on national themes appeared some time
later, in 1908-10. Francisco de la Torre and Saturnino Herran
were among the first artiSts to paim in this way. It would seem
Modern Mexican Painting 11
that a popular type of art, which is essentially a folk art, usually
In 191 I, as a logical consequence of the new impressionist
movrment in Europe. the students of the School of Fine Arts.
including myself, staged a strike. The objectives of the strike
were the tOtal suppression of academic methods and the
establishment of a school ofopen air freedom. The struggle was
led by young revolutionaries who had played an active pan in
(he political struggle against the Pomrian dictatorship (jose de
Jesus Ibarra, Raziel Cabildo, Miguel Angel Fernandez and
others). They were helped by the younger students, myself
among them.
The strike was successful and me first such :.ehool was
established in the village of Santa Anita and directed by the
impressionist painter, Alfredo Ramos Maninez.
In 1913, the students of the new Sama Anita school were
dividing their time between plotting against the regime of the
usurper, Victoriano Huerta, and the problems of impressionist
technique and fonn.
The plotting brought persecution and most of us decided to
join the ranks of the revolutionaries in the Constitutionalist
Anny.
In this way we came into contact with the Mexican people,
with the Mexican peasants, with the Mexican Indians, with the
men of Mexico, at this intensely human time of civil war and
social vindication. Here was the first antecedent of the
humanistic concept of an which we wrre to develop later.
We came into contact nm only with the Mexican people but
with their idiosyncrasies, with the geography and archaeology
of Mexico, with the whole history of our art, with our popular
an, and the whole of Mexican culture. And because of this
contact, we ceased to be Paris bohemians.
We came to realise that at every important historical period
art has performed a &I'eal social function, whether as official
Slate art or as subversive an to be used against the state. To the
astonishment of theaesthetes and the incipient purists, we found
it obvious that Christian art had most certainly been dedicated
to thr service of propaganda.
12 Art and Revolution
It therefore bet:ame our prime object to further the
development orlhe Mexican revolution through me platform of
our art.
In 191 9 I .....ent to Europe with several other paimers. In Paris
I met Diego Rivera. h was a meeting between the new fervour
and ideals of the young Mexican painters (represented by me)
who had joined the armed struggle of the Mexican revolution
and the representative of an important period of the fonnaJ
revolution in the plastic arts of Europe, Diego Rivera.
Paris was at thal time in the post-cubist period. Cubism was
perhaps one of the most important modem tendencies. I
felt that the theorif5 of cezanne and his group ("Make
impressionism something solid and durable like the art of the
museums; geometrical structures ...") were the beginning of a
positive reassessmem of art. Now these theories seem so
elementary rhat they serve to show me how low art had sunk
after the Renaissance.
In 1921, I combined my own ideas which I shared with my
fellow an studentS who had fought with me in the revolutionary
anny, with those of the renovating group of Paris at that time,
which were the ideas of Diego Rivera, and I published in the
Barcelona magazine, Vida Amtricana, my famous manifesto to
American artistS, which was the first caU to build a monumental,
heroic art form, both human and public, directly inspired by the
extraordinary pre-Hispanic cultures of America.
To this I added, at a later date, the following, which I now find
to be very important: "The artistic revolution of Paris is limited
to the painted surface of the picture; a truly profound
revolution should be both on the surface and deep down; it
must embrace the function of art and the forms inherem to this
function, and not merely the style."
How could we achieve monumemal, heroic, public art? We
decided mat to be public art must be mural. And so began the
Mexican mural an movemenl, which became the root and trunk
of the whole ofmodem Mexican painting, with its ramifications
in engraving, sculpture, music, literature, cinema, etc.
What technique should we use for our mural art? We decided
Modern Mexican Painting 13
it should be the fr~co and the encaustic techniques ofantiquity,
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. And we set to work. The
past is the springboard of the fUlure.
In 1923, we decided that the subject matter of our first work
did nOt match the theoretical function we aspired to, and we
organised ourselves into a professional association which we
named the Syndicate of Revolutionary Mexican Painters,
Sculptors and Engravers.
We thus became more politically militant, and the ideological
level ofour work. improved.
However, we were still using the same techniques and
fonns-the lost styles of the past which we had revived.
In 1924, our political involvement led us intuitively to
broaden the public nature of Ollr work. We became interested in
the poster and in graphics and published the magazine El
Madltte, which became our party organ. It was our letter of
introduction to the Mexican popular masses.
Political differences with the government, our artistic
patron, caused our syndicate to break. up. Rivera and his
assistants continued to paint murals. Xavier Guerrero, Ama.do
de la Cueva, Reyes Perez and others, myself among them,
opted for graphics and El MacheLt. Orozco and some of the
others went for a time to the U.S.A. or South America.
I then went through a period of intensive political and trade
union activity and spent months, and sometimes years, in
prison. We were no longer simply revolutionary "amateurs" as
we had been to start with, we were developing into really
experienced militants.
In 1931, I was under strict police surveillance and went to live
in Tasco. I decided to devote myself enti~ly to art again, as I
believed that new plastic forms would result from the political
experience 1 had had. There was a big exhibition of my work at
the Spanish Casino ofTasco.
However, when I made a speech after the exhibition, I said
that one's work does nor always in practice correspond to one's
theory. The habits retained from the past are stronger than
one's ideological convictions. I might have improved slightly in
 l
14 Art and Revolution
my structure, volume and perhaps in my political c:xpression;
but that was not enough. I was still rather primitive and
unskilled.
Meanwhile there was a new generation of Mexican painters
sympathetic to our movement: Rufino Tamayo, Julio
Castellano. etc. These painters, however, slOod aside from the
political struggle in which we had been involved. and instead
accentuated me Christian, archaeological, folk·art, essentially
picturesque nature of our earlier period. Funhermore. they
made the transition from murals to canvas much more directly
than we had done, and became exclwively "Mexicanist" rather
than political. They were the embryo afme Pure Artmovemem.
me most serious form of deviation wilhin the art movement
today, as I shall explain later.
Their technique was similar to that of their immediate
predet:esson: ourselves.
Because of continual police persecution, I exiled myself to
that highly indusU"ialised (ounny. me United St'Hes. This is
where the real story of my "iridu" of technique begins. None of
these lricAJ were the result of previously conceived theory. only
of unfores~able,casual events.
The chronology of these trickJ was as foUows:
I. The use ofcemem and sand rather than lime and santi as in
rraditional fresco painting. Lime is nm toO satisfaclOry when
used on the concrete walls of modern buildings.
2. The useofa spray gun 10 paimcemem frescos. because the
new material required a faster lOOI.
3. The use of active composition rather than traditional,
academic composition. The spectator is neither a statue as
implied by rectilinear perspective. nor an automaton on a fixed
axis as implied by curvilinear perspective; he moves over the
whole surface of a determined area. (Elsewhere I shall refer to
the way in which "Pure Artists play" widl this concept.)
4. The use of the phowgraph to capture the process of the
mural. The painters of old did not possess this extraordinary
aid.
5. The use of the electric pr~iector in tracing out the
Modern Mexican Painting ,5
distortions inherent in mural painting. Previously this had been
very difficult and results were very poor.
6. The use of the camera to record the human document.
Integral reality had been deprived by the lack ofthis medium.
7. By using the spray gun I came to realise that both tools and
materials are generic determinants of an. It is a serious mista.k.e
to believe that style is determined only by man's creativity.
8. The use of the camera to analyse both volume and space,
and the movement of volumes in space. Photography can teach
us much and help us find new and more scientific methods of
composition and perspective, to replace the routines we
inherited from the past.
9. The use of silicone as a material has an enormous future in
wall painting, in particular for murals on external walls_
Silicone is a mineral with qualities immeasurably superior to
those of the tr.lditional fresco.
10. The use of materials made with pyroxiline, which I prefer
to all others. In my opinion, the enonnous plasticity of
pyroxiline gives it the qualities of superlative oil. The possibility
of both smooth and rough textures, shading and subtle
mixtures, make this modern chemical invention vastly superior
to all past products.
11. The use, both in formal painting and in superimposed
pictorial style, of polyangular foons-movie fonns, iff may use
the term-in the search for truly modern ideological
expression. The foons and sryles which predominate in modem
Mexican painting are still hieratic and therefore archaic and do
not respond to the expressional needs of modem times. Purists
with their exclusively instinctual motivation can only achieve a
type of decorativeness which they falsely represent as a new
method of active construction.
12. Thf' concept of the mural in architectonic space and not
merely in [enm of each individual wall, with independent
panels linked by decorative loops or by a relationship of
proportion or colour. The spatial concept ofmural painting will
no doubt become the main principle of monumental painting.
The use of active surface~oncave, convex and a combination
ofbotll, and also in combination with flat surfaces, breaks, etc.,
16 Art and Revolution
will make feasible the dynamism which all anistic creators ofthe
past have searched for.
13. Finally, I suggested mat we should set up, in Mexico, an
Institute to investigate the chernisrryof!.he plasticans. a problem
which had been seriously negleaed bOlh by academicians.
pseudo-Purists and neo-re.tlislS lik.e ourselves. all over the
world. Atlhe same time, I suggested that an Institute should be
set up as soon as possible to study all the geomerric, perspective
and optical problems connected with the an of painting.
In 19341 returned to Mexico after having partially carried out
many of the experiments previously memioned and found the
following situation: Orozco and Rivera had improved !.heir
original, traditional technique, but their technique was still thal
of the craftsman. The paimers of the following genera Lions were
no longer "Mexicanim" in the abstract, but had been seriously
contaminated by the PuriStS of the so-called Paris school. A
cocktail of "Mexicanist" picturesqueness and Parisian
picturesqueness predominated in their work. As far as they were
concemed, Mexican painting was academically only another
branch of French painting. Their national technique and their
intellectual sources were as primitive as ever. Others were
becoming involved in a nationalistic neo-academism. It was
evidem that the drive towards monumental, heroic, truly oeo-
realistic an was being abandoned in favour of commercially
oriented art, mainly directed tOwards the American market and
the Yankee tourist.
The articles I wrote about this were the cause of my great
controversy with Rivera, in which I said the following: that the
an which was being produced was for tourist export; that mural
painting had improved in technique but had been reduced in
size; that we should improve on "Christianist" techniques and
forms; that we should be more scientific in our methods of
composition and perspeClive, which were still primitive and
unsound; that while it was technically possible to playa
revolutionary hymn on a church organ, it was not the
instrumelU one would prefer; that we should progress from
colonial to modern architecture, in which the mur.d is
conceived as an integral part of the design.
Modern Mexican Painting 17
Since 1939, I have painted murals in Mexico City, Chile, Cuba
and again in Mexico. When I spoke of my triJ;h I explained my
technical objectives in painting, and I do not think this lecture is
the place to discuss them in weater detail.
But there is something I must empbasise: when I returned
from Argentina in 1934 I found no material change in the
panorama of Mexican art. unless perhaps for the worse. In
addition to the confusion of the artists, which I mentioned
earlier, there was even greater confusion among those who write
about an. Many of these are great poets, but they use the
analytic methods used by anaitics the world over, which do not
pennit them {Q arrive at constructive conclusions. Because they
are unaware of the true nature and historical importance of our
movement, most of them have continually accentuated the
deviations I mentioned before. They have also been poisoned by
the concepts of Pure Arc.
What then is the way out of this situation? Many people
believe that everything will be solved by condemning what they
call the "monopoly of the big three", by which they meanJose
Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera and myself. But neither my
colleagues nor the art critics will get anywhere unless they
produce better ideas and a bett~r plan than ours.
This plan might be based on the following considerations:
1. Systematic criticism of the "Mex:icanist" concept (th~ is
nothing worse in an than overwhelming nationalism), of
archaeologism, of popularistic revolutionarism, ofmaterial and
technical stagnation (out of date techniques and materials
inevilably lead to crude simplicity of style). The work. of Diego
Rivera is characleristic of this stagnation despite its great
intrinsic vaJue both to the an of Mexico and the world.
2. Systematic criticism of Pure Art tendencies (fortunately
more theoretical than applied) and of the political confusion
(nihilistic liberalism) which is becoming more apparent in the
work of Jose Clemente Orozco which nevertheless still has
cxtraordinarJ! pOtential strength.
3. Systematic criticism of aU the mystical ballaSl.and romantic
emorivity (totally antilhetic to a modern, realistic concept)
which appear in my own work; and criticism also of what
18 Art and Revolution
remams obscure and incomplete in my theoretical
formulations.
4. Systematic criticism of anachronistic colonial intellectual
Purism (ma/in£1liJma), (our [annal origins are to be found in
Rivera's interest in Cubism), and also of the subjective.
decorative picturesqueness which smothers «.he work of Carlos
Merida and Rufino Tamayo, although they have evident ability;
it also smoc.hers the work of all those Mexican artists who left
our movement for the outworn practical and theoretical trends
of the modem School of Paris, and whose painting today is
directed only towards the snobs and decadent oligarchs.
5. Systematic criticism of "Mexicanist" and traditionalist
neo-acadernism. which has harmed lhe work of so many
talented young painters of the younger generations, whose only
fonnal doctrine is "good craftsmanship", "good painting".
"good drawing" and "good engraving", all by means of
abstract techniques, and who have obviously forgotten that OUf
art is basically monumental and realistic.
6. Systematic criticism, in short, of the twO causes of the
disintegration and crisis of modern Mexican painting:
(a) Persistence in the use of the theories, material techniques
and primitive and primitivistic styles of our first period.
(bl The swing from the functional doctrines and praaices of
the Mex.ican neo-realist movement to the lendencies of the so
called Pure Art School of Paris, the theoretical concern ofwhich
was originally 10 find a new order in paiming, 10 "make
impressionism an .an like that of the art galleries", in other
words a new classicism, but which has become transformed into
a chaos of purely fonnalistic speculation, and is now a new
decorative style destined to enhance the houses of a snobbish
minority, an artistic toy for the entertainment of "ladies" and
"gentlemen". (These comments on the Pure Art movement of
Paris do not imply a denial of its great importance in
demolishing traditional academic routines; but to remain
"graciously" demolishing them, is another thing.)
To sum up:
In opposition to the pseudo-modern aesthetes of the Paris
lVIoa(!)rn MeXIcan fJaintlng 19
School there has been formal progress in the plastic ans (by
"formal" I refer to the material and professional phenomenon
which culminates in style). This formal progress, which is a
progressive accumulation. signifies an increase in plastic values.
and the perfection of plastic language and eloquence; it
proceeds hislOrically from the invention of the silhouette,
through rhe invention offormal schemes the invention ofspatial
schemes, the invemion of the structure of form and t1H~ structure
of s~ace, t?e invention of perspective, and the shading ofspace,
the mventlOn of the movemems offorms in space, we invention
and play of textures, the invention of the vibralion of light and
the emphasis on the discovery of the subjective {abstractl
el:ments which evid~mly. form part of people and objective
thmgs. A process ofhis ton cal progress which is similar to that of
the sciences and sociology.
Our modem art movement in Mexico on account both of its
theory and its practice, and in spite ofrhe negative aspects I have
poimed. out, is on the road to finding and accumulating all the
positive plastic values which history has bequeathed us. It is the
only movement in the whole world to attempt this. Il is the
eternal desideratUm of an increasingly more imegral and more
veritable realism. We can desire nothing better than PO$[-
Baroque an.

3 weight of their traditions and to become more universal; most
A New Direction for the New
Generation of American Painters
and Sculptors
(Drafted by Siqueiros and published in the first lind only number of the
h
magazine Vidl Ameficanll ("'American life "edited by himself in
Sarcelona. Spain, 19211
D~lnmt1ual infi~nu$ and nt'W ltndnuUj
OUf work. is mainly extemporaneous, it progresses
incoherently and produces next to nothing of pennancm wonh
to match the vigour of our great racial gifts. Isolated from
valuable new tendencies against which we reacted with hostility
and prejudice. we adopted from Europe only the decadeni
influences which haye poisoned our youth and prevent us from
seeing essential values; the anaemia of Aubrey Beardsley, the
preciOSity of Arnall Jean, the disastrous archaism of Ignacio
Zuloaga, Anglada Camarasa's fireworks and the sculptural
confections of BisIOIfi., Q.ueralt, B("nlliure, etc., all this
profitable art nouvtau, dangerously camouAaged as art and
which sells so well here (parricularly if it is imported from
Spain). Spanish an has shown marked decadence from the early
nineteenth century; recent exhibitions in Madrid representative
of Spanish contemporary an fill one's heart with despair;
traditional literary an, theatrical an in the musical comedy style
(the Zarzuela of folk art) which has contaminated us through
racial affinity. Sunyer, Picasso and Juan Cds, three modem
Spal1lsh geniuses, avidly embraced Cezanne and listened to the
voice of Renoil, many years ago.
Fortunately a new, vigorous group of painters and sculptors,
more in lune with the spirit of the times, is emerging in Spain;
A New Direction for the New Generation 21
they are concerned to free themselves from the enOlmous
of them are from Catalonia.
We extend a ration31 welcome to every source of spiritual
rentwal from Paul cezanne onwards: the invigorating substance
of imprmioniJm, purifying cubi5m, in all its ramifications, the
juLurum which Iibeldted new emotive forces (but not that which
naIvely tried to annihilate the previous invulnerable process)
and now the new rtvaLuation of"dassical voic~s" .. _<Dada isstilJ
in its birth process); 311 tl'"ibu(;ui~s ofth~ great river, the many
psychic aspects of which we may easily find within ourselves;
preparatory theories, generally endowed with fundamenta.l
dements which have made pa.inting and sculpture into a pla.stic
an again and enrich it with admirable new factors. W~must give
back their [o5l valut!J to painting and sculpture, and at the same
time ~ndow them with new Val1U5. We muSt make our work
confonn to the inviolable laws of a~sthetic equilibrium as did
the classical painters, and become craftsmen as skilled as they;
we must regard the ancients as models for their constructive
basis and their great sincerity, but we must not use archaic
"motifs" which .....ould be exotic for us. Wt mwt [jUt our
marvtl101u dynamic agt.' Love the modern machine, dispenser of
unexpected plastic emotions, the contemporary aspects of our
daily life, our cities in the process ofconstruaion, the sober and
practical tnginuT of our modern buildings, stripped of
architectural complexities (immense towers of steel and cement
jammed into the ground); our comfortable furniture and
utensils (plastic materials of the first order). We must dress our
lnvu[ntTab[t humanity in modern clothes: "ntw subjtcu", "new-
aspects". Above all, we must remain firmly convinced that the
an of the future must be increasingly 5UPtrior although it is
bound to suffer from transitory decadence.
The jmpondtTance tij the comtruClivt 5pirit OVtT tht dtCorative or
analytical
We draw silhouettes, filling them with pretty colours; when
modelling, we remain engrossed in superficial arabesque and
overlook the concept of the great primary masses: the cuht5,
 ....... ,",' ,... "'"'V'""'"',,''',,
cones, sphem, cylindm, pyramid.! which should be the scaffold of Let us abandon literary 1Ilolift and devote ourstbm purely to art
all plastic architecture. Let us impose the corwtructive spirit upon Let us further reject theories postulating a "national" art. We
the purely decorative; colour and line are expressive elements of must become universal; our racial and local elements will
the second rank, theJUTuiamtnlal basis of a work of art is the inevitably appear in our work..
magnificent geometrical StruClure ofform and the concept of the Our free schools are really open-air academies (as dangerous as
interplay of volume and perspective which combine lO create tbe official academies, where at leasl we learned to k.now the
depth; "10 creaJe spatial volumes". According to our dynamic or classics); in them we have commercially oriented teachers and a
static objectivity, let us be COnstrUClOrs first and foremost; let us type of criticism which nips personalities in the bud.
mould and build on our personal emotional reactions to Let us close our ears to the criticisms of our poets; they
nature, with a scrupulous regard for the truth. produce beautiful literary articles, completely divorced from
We must specify without ambiguity the "organic quality" of the true values we seek. in our work.
the "plastic elements" in our work; we must creoLe matter which
may be solid or fragile, TOugh or smooth, opaque or
transparem, etc. .
Our framework must be finn, but, if neassary. we can
caricature in order to humanise it.
Artistic theories who~ sale aim is lO "paim light", i.e. to copy
or interpret luminosity ("luminism", "pointillism" "divi.l1onum")
are lacking in that creativity which is the objective of an; these
are discredited, puerile theories, which we in America have been
enthusiastic about for the last few years; they are skI:. branches
of imprwioniJm, which Paul Cizanne had pruntd and restored to
its essentials: we must make impreSSionism something as solid and
durable as the art in the art galleries.
An understanding of the admirable human context of Negro
Ar1 and Primitive Art in general has oriented the plastic arts
towards a clarity and depth lost for four centuries in an
underbrush of indecision; we must come closer to the work of
the ancient settlers of our valleys, the Indian painters and
sculptors (Mayas, Adm, Incas, ere.); our physical proximity to
them will help us to absorb the constructive vigour of their
work, in which there is evident knowledge of the elements of
nature, a.nd these things can be our point ofdeparture. We must
adopt their synthetic energy, but avoid [he lamentable
archaeological reconstructions (Indianum, Primitivism, •
Ammcanism) which are so fashionable today and which are
leading us into ephemeral stylisations.

--~ . .
 Social, PoliticalandAestheric Principles 25

4 be to socialise artistic expression and wipe OUt bourgeois

A Declaration of Social. Political
and Aesthetic Principles
(Drawn up by Siqueirol in 1922 and signed by all the members of the
Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters ilnd SCUlpIOl'I. among whom
were Diego River., Jose Clemente OrOlCO, Jean Charlot, Ignacio
A~mnsolo. Xavier Guerrero, Fermin RevuBhas. Robeno Montenegro.
Carlos Merida and many others)
individualism.
We repudjale so-called easel painting and every kind of art
favoured by uhra·imellectual circles, because it is aristocratic,
and we praise monumental art in aU its forms, because it is
public property.
We proclnim that at this time of social change from a decrepit
order to a new one, the creators of beauty muSt use their best
effortS to produce ideological works of art for the people; art
must no longer be the expression of individual satisfaction
which it is today, but should aim to become a fighting, educative
an for all.

The Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors

directs itself to the native races humiliated for centuries; to the
soldiers made into hangmen by their officers; to the workers
and peasants scourged by the rich; and to the intellectuals who
do not Ratter the bourgeoisie.
We side with those who demand the disappearance of an
ancient, cruel system in which the fann worker produces food
for the loud-mouthed politicians and boss~, while he starves;
in which the industrial workers in the factories who weave doth
and by the work of their hands make life comfortable for the
pimps and prostitu[e5, whjle they crawl and freeze; in which the
Indian soldier heroically leaves the land he has tilled and
eternally sacrifices his life in a vain auempt to destroy the misery
which has lain on his face for centuries.
The noble work of our race, down to irs most insignificant
spiritual and physical expressions, is native (and essentially
Indian) in origin. With their admirable and extraordinary taim!.
to creali' beauty, peculiar to themstlveJ, the art oj the Mexican people is
the most wholesome spiritual expmsion in the world and this tradition
is our greatest treasure. Great because it belongs collectively to
the people and this is why our fundamemal aesthetic goal must

5 and will therefore be inferior as a work. of an, no mdller how
New Thoughts on the Plastic Arts
in Mexico
(lecture delivered by Sequelros 00 the oceasion of the clo5ure of the
ellhibition of his p.lIIiJ'ltlng$ in the Casino Espaflol G,lIery. Melltco City.
Febn.lery 10th. 19331
(1) Painting and sculptu.re art prQfmional craftsfor malu.re people
For the last ten years it has been said that painting and
sculpting are crafts. This was the opinion of the Syndicate of
Painters and Sculptors. Other people feel that they are
professions, like any other profession; this is the opinion of the
older Mexican painters. I maintain rnat paiming and sculpture
are professional crafts and I use both these terms in their
commonly accepted sense.
They are crafts because the work is done with the hands and is
subjen lO the material laws of experience.
They are professions because they require objective scientific
knowledge.
Of course alilhis ~fers to externals and not to the subjective
emorional factor which produces the crealive impulse that
males use of the material means available; this is a completely
personal, congenilal factor.
It could be said that if experience is the fruil of practice and
artistic know-how is only acquired by methodical application,
then a work of an can only be produced after many long years of
hard work, when the painter or sculptor altains his creative
matUl"iry after sufficient practice in mak.ing use of the means of
expression. Before this, his work will have been the work of a
, '0"""'''''''' /I' ""C'J\/",V
beginner, showing an incomplete, heterogeneous personaliry
great the anist's talent.
(1) Spuntamow, irUUi1IIJ~ worh oj art produced by childun, youth and
diJ~tlanw are only oj r~ltUitJ~ tJaJu~ and this must b~ matU cl~ar in ordn-
to pul an md. ona andjor all, to 1M dangnOUJjtliJmsm whkh has grown
up about them
The painting and sculpture ofchildren, youth and dilettantes
is of gr-eat interest as an expression of the primary, aesthetic
values of a given social. geographical or racial moment; but that
is all. 11 may be of some value to the professional painter as a
source ofaesthetic elements worthy offurther development, but
it can never be considered representative of a period or of a
nation. To believe otherwise is a transitory kind of snobbishnm.
(J) The profmional craft of painting and 5culpturt can only bt taught
through appr~ntiwhjp to a maJt~r
A painter or sculpror who does not produce any work cannot
teach. Painting and sculpture cannot be taught theorelically, no
matter how good an artist the teacher is. For the last cemury, the
Academy has applied a fatally bad method in aHempting to
teach art pedagogically in preference to the age-old method of
praclical apprenticeship in the private studio of a master.
We must return to this system, and wilhoUl any mystification.
All Diego Rivera really did was to change the name of the old
Academy of San Carlos, when he renamed it the School of
Plastic Arts. The pedagogical system continued as before, and in
faci continues to exist in the School, and a pedagogical S)'Slem of
teaching art is the equivalent of an Academy. The pupils are
taught 10 manufacture their colours and p~pare their canvases;
but this cannot be taught in lhe abstract because it is intimately
connected with the technique of the masle.rwho each apprentice
chooses. Thequaliry and nature of me colours and the canvases,
etc., are of the utmost important in the generation of a work of
an. There is as much varielyofmaterials and techniques as there
is of aesthetic styles. It is a great mistake to suppose thaI the
materials and techniques of art can be chosen according to an
invariable recipe.
 "..,< 0'''; II"'VU'UU"'"
""
But how could we pUl this system of leaching art into
practice? How can we pUl an end to the mystification which
exists in rhe so-caUed School of Plastic Arts and Related
Subjects?
The School of Plastic Arts should be turned into a museum.
The department of the Ministry of Public Education which is in
charge of drawing should disappear. The "open air schools"
have no reason [0 continue. Artistic drawing should no longer
be taught in either primary or secondary schools. The School of
Planic Arts is not only useless to ilS students, but it is also deadly
to mose artisu who teach there. Magnificent painters tum into
magnificent bureaucrats. There is nothing worse for the success
of the plastic arts in Mexico man to reward its great painters and
sculptors by giving them teaching postS, which is a death
sentence to their an. The painter or sculptor who becomes a
teacher has to spend [WO or three hours a day teaching and
another eight hours a day fiercely defending the bureaucratic
POSt he occupies. An artist thrown the "bone" of a teaching
POst becomes an ineffectua.l teacher and a full time defender of
the bone.
Therefore we must put an end to this situation. The (wo and a
half million pesos which are spent at the present time on art
teaching in Mexico should go into a reserve fund which ....·ould
periodically buy the paintings and sculptures produced ~y
Mexican artists. Those who are fortunate enough to have theIr
work purchased in this way would have to set up their own
studio-workshops and accept those pupils who choose them (Q
be their masters.
Let us suppose that at the present time there are forry painters
and ten sculptors who could set up and direct their own studios.
That would make fifty studios. Let us suppose that the master of
each studio must take ten students. We would thus have 500
studenLS. Supposing that the Government buys ten works a year
from each master at a COSt of one thousand pesos each. Each
master would annually receive 10,000 pesos and the
government would pay outa total of 500,000 pesos. Foreven the
most voracious of artists in Mexico, 10,000 pesos is a
magnificent income and enough to cover the expenses of
fJl8Sm; Arrs In MeXICO <'9
running a studio. Therewould be enough left to carry OUt public
works of art, which would again benefit the studios. The
students' work would also be purchased at exhibitions which
would be held from time to time. And the masters would still be
able to do private work.
And what should the govemment do with the work it
acquires? It would go [0 enrich the collection of the School of
Plastic Arts, and could be hung in galleries set aside for modern
arL Secondary schools and universities could have art galleries
attached to them. Exhibitions could travel all oYer the Republic
and be sem abroad.
In short, my suggestion shows how we could create the
srudio-workshops we have been talking about for so long and
expenses would be no higher than iliey are now. I am certain
iliat all those paimers and sculptors who fed they are still
capable of pTOducing good work., will realise the advantage of
this form of work and teaching. The only opposition will come
from those who have alread)' become bureaucratic fossils.
(4) Artisli€ drawing Jhou/d not be taught aJ a Jeparalt Jubftd in primary
aM uamdary Jt:IwoLs
Constructive geometrical drawing should be taught in
primary and secondary school classes rather than artistic
drawing. This would be of great use to those children who are
going to become work.en or technicians. Constructive drawing
is indispensable for all kinds of work, from the simplest [Q the
most complicated. The conditions of life both today and in the
future make this a vitally needed subject. As for artistic drawing,
pupils should have the materials readily available and the right
to use them whenever they want. But it would be a recreational
activity_ Group teachers should be able to give whatever
guidance is needed. They should limit themselves to drawing the
children's anention towards nature and away from the bad
influences of newspaper drawings, magazines and book
illustrations. Furthermore, children's drawings are always of
imerest.
Those children who have an inclination for art, those who
wish to become professional painters and sculptors, are sure to
30 Art and Revolution
apprentice themselves (0 master anists. The children must have
the right to choose the master whose work they most admire.
(}) Some art iJ imilaJ.illtly, fkscriptilltly or anecdotally pktumqu(; some
iJ tHtnlially pictumqut
There is a greal deal of confusion about what is truly
picturesque. Some works of art can be picturesque because they
are weakly imitative or descriptive, or because the anecdotal
coment is more important than the plastic structure. But it is not
only imitation or anecdote which are picturesque; an abstract
work of an, devoid of imitation, description or anecdote, novel
in fonn and of Pure An tendency, can also be piCluresque. This
is twice as bad because it is an organic defeel. The
picturesqueness appears in weak plastic concepts. small.
dispersed proportions, in puerile detail and in 5MbbiJh.
eccentricities. There are Cubist and Surrealist piclUreswhich are
as organically piclUresque as the worst anecdotal or descriptive
painting. The choice of artistic object, whether a theme or an
anecdote, or in their place abstract forms, lineal rhythm and a
simple co~lation of values, does not add up to a work. of an
unless they are worle.ed out by the artist with constructive energy.
emotion and strength of mind. Of course, the danger of
picturesqueness is much greater when popular themes and well
le.nown stOries are used, as we shall see further on.
(6) Th~ exailaJion qf popular art Wflj a naJ.ural r~tl(tion agaimt tlu
aristoaatic, Europ~an art ofthe POTfirio Diat period
This exaltation was good in some ways. bUl it has acquired a
dangerous direction, not only for those painters and sculptors
who follow it; it can also harm the manifestations of popular
art. We must therefore define what is meant by popular art and
its importance for professional painters and sculptors. Popular
an, although it has accumulated a great deal of technique and
experience, is really the manifestation of a race or people who
have been slaves for centuries and have therefore losl the
possibility of expressing themselves in monumeOlal terms as
they did when they were flourishing. This is why popular art,
although undoubtedly beautiful, is invariably piclUresque.
Plastic Arts in Mexico 31
For professional painters and sculptors, popular art is in the
same category as the an of children, youth and dilettantes; it
constitU[C'S an imponant document which reveals geographical.
social and racial values which allow the profeSSional artist [Q
revise his aesthetic principles. In popular an the professional
artiSI may find the seeds which he can develop into a 'ft'orle. ofan;
but nothing more. To male.e a fetish of popular art and
children's an is nO[ only very dangerous to the formation of an
artisl, but also for popular art itself.
(7) The grrattst dang" to the rruxiem Mtxican art mDVrnlenl is to b~
found in the painting called "MtKit:an Curious"
This rype of painting increases in direct proportion to the
touriSt trade in Mexico. II is one of the effects of Ya.nkee
imperialin penetration. Consciously or subconsciously, mosl of
Mc:x~co's painters and sculptors are influenced by this tendency.
11 15 10 fact pan of the popular an fetish. It manifests itself as a
tendency to paim the rypical picture thai the tourist wants.
Modem art is thus ceasing to be an organically aesthetic
expression of geography, social environment and Mexican
lradition; instead it becomes folie. an for export. All this
"Mexican Curiow" art, produced in industrial quantities, is
strUcturally an alien an dressed up in Mexican clothes. Born
famous and mediocre artists paint pictures of this Iype, some to
a. greate~ exten.t. some to a lesser. Cornejo paints like this all the
time, DIego Rivera only half, but the facts are significanl. We
must put all conscientious Mexican painters and sculptors on
their guard against this, otherwise our movement, with all its
great potential, wiJI sooner or later become a school of folk art
instead of remaining faithful to the enormous and monumental
artistic values vital to all important movements. We should see
less of popular art and more of the worle. of the Indian masters,
both of Mexico and the rest of America. Their work expresses
clearly and gently, what folie. an expresses in immalUl-e
language. Ifwe want to learn to draw and compose, they can
te~~h . ~s bener than anyone. If we wish to avoid puerile
tnvlalltles, we should loole. to their works, because they will
teach us to understand the great essential masses, the primary
 Art and Revolution
32
forms. We shall also find in the work afme American Indians
the metaphysical complement inheren~ to the ,masterpiece of all
tbe world and all the ages. By studymg thelT wOI'ks we shall
understand clearly that art is I~ot only a problem of. the
mechanics of composition, it is also a problem of Slate of mind.
Indian Lradilional painting will make us ratify what "'eourselves
have produced in the same geo~phical con~itions. We can see
how in their paiming our regional Aora IS not reproduced
descriptively but is used to create equivalent plastic rorm~. In a
word: we have nothing here which can teach us to paint. or
sculpt better than our Indian sculptures and pre-Cartesian
monuments.
There has been tOO much made of popular art and this is
bea.use young painters and sculptors ar~ I~ore concerned with
Posada, votive offerings and tavern paintings than the works
bequeathed to us by the Indian masters. ..
The imponance of Mexican indigenous .tradltlOn for u~ ~oes
not mean that we should ignore the other Important rradltlons
of the world. Nor should we exchange "Mtxiean Curiow" art for
archaeological art; nor should our artistic production be
limited to a national scale. We must be modern and
imernalional first and fan-most, but we must contribute artistic
values of our own (0 world aesthetics.
(8) In tJeapingfromfol* arlwt mwl nol bteomt Jnobbi5h
Some of our anist comrades, in trying to escape from me
influence of "Mtxican CurioUJ" art, unfortunately fall into a type
of snob art which is totallyaJien (0 our own geographical reality.
They believe that "Mtxican Curiow" is something more. than .an
imitation of popular art; that it accepts popular art as Its POint
of departure and is organically weak, becaus~ it concen,t,rates. on
the picturesque external aspects; they believe th~t Mtxlean
Curiow" art is also under the Influence ofarchaeologIcal art, and
this is a very grave mistake. They do n?t understand .that
archaeological works or art produced at a tlme when Amencan
indigenous an was Aourishing have no con~ection with the
picturesqueelemenrs of modern popular art. ~t I~ extremely easy
to imitate popular art, and there are many ImItators. We can
Plastic A rts in Mexico 33
only understand the plastic values ofthe ancient Indian masters
after years of detailed study. This shows the distance which
separates it from the petty, degraded popular an of today.
The snobbish trend has been increaSingly noticeable in
Mexico in the last five years. II is a logical reaction against Diego
Rivera's prolific production of "Mt'xUan Cunous". But we must
find the right way, which is not (Q be found in European
painting and sculpture. COlllemporaneous painting and
sculpture is becoming more and more a kind of cerebral
masturbation, both characteristic and representative of the
decadent bourgeois classes. I repeat, thai lhis does not mean
that I think. we should isolate ourselves from European art
trends. On the contrary, I believe we should be thoroughly
informed of everything that is happening outside Mexico, but I
aha belkve that a set of circumstances (tradition, geography,
race and social conditions> have given us the possibility of
accomplishing something which would be a real contribution to
universal beauty. and yet be alien to the snobbism so
characteristic of European culture today.
(9) Mural painting mwl cumpl~nJ, archiluturr
Good muraJ painting is very far from being simply the
painting of panels, however important these may be as
individual works of art. Murab require an ornamental style
which wiU provide a connection between the panels and the
archilectonic whole.
There are, furthelmore, logical principles which will not
permit pictures to be painted in places where they .cannot.be
appreciated. Simple, quiet colour schemes are reqUired which
do not destroy the unity of the walls and the whole structure.
MuraJ painting simply to cover (he walls, as though one were
merely trying to paint very large pictures, would reflect very
detrimentally on the quality of the mural.
Neither is it acceptable to paint a motley of brightly coloured
objects, people, etc, in the manner of t~e detestable m~ral
paintings of the late eighteenth and early ntneteenth ccotunes.
Many of the Renaissance maslers both cannOt and shou~d ?Ot
be considered good mural painters. The besL mural pamtmg
34 Art and Revolution
was produced in Europe by the pre-Christian civilisations and
me early Christian schools. From GiatIa onwards there is clear
evidence of decadence in the omamenl.ation of buildings.
The most recent examples of incomparably magnificent work
in the imerior and exterior ornamentation of monuments was
done by American civilisations before the Conquest.
What I have just said should show how necessary it is to put an
end to the syuem of decorating public buildings with murals ~f
variable artiStic value. We have not yet built in Mexico one Unit
of real worth. Everything that has been done so f~rwjJI pass ~ntO
history as a mediocre example of mural ~ec?rauon. And since
we in Mexico have a chance [Q decorate bUlldmgs. we must learn
by our experiences of me past ten years and produce something
benel".
(10) w~ mwl rtlum to Jormal painting and Jcnp righL awayfr(WI tJu
pumlt work ojtlu cOnlmlJx1rary art mob
None of the ancient maners, or the masters of the great
periods ofart, would ever have presented a preliminary stu~y. as
a finished work of art. All the great masters. the great painters
and sculptors of all times have always worked on the basis of a
series of Sludies in preparation for a big work. Theywould never
have dreamed of exhibiting these srudies. The drawings of the
Renaissance'painters were never regarded. either by themselves
or their admirers, as great artistic achievements, butas stages of
varying importance which they achieved in the process of
producing a work of art. . aboul the arts. Others say that the only valid criticism is thai of
In the main it has been the French modern painters who have
extolled the virtues of the initial srudy. to which they have
sometimes given greater importance than to the greatest efforts
of the mas tel". Matisse is an eloquent example of this trend.
Idolatry for work realised with the minimum of effort has been
topical in Europe over the last few years. Thlj have a na~e for
this kind ofwork; theycal1 it: intimate. essential, a work With the
concentrated essence of a larger work. But in fact. this doctrine
is evidence of impotence and. in general, a proof of capitalist
decadence.
We must Aee from this tendency. Our work must be as
Plastic Arts in Mex.ico 35
transcendent as we can make it. as elaborate and as complete.
Our work. must be replete with artistic values. It muSt be both
physical and metaphysical. and as methodically and seriously
constructed as the beSt work of the besl artistic periods.
(II) Portrait paiming is alJo agood artJorm, although SQrTU wwld say it
iJMI
Modern painters often speak derogatively of portrait
painting. A portrait-they say-is a psychological problem,
and psychology and art are!Wo separate things. In my opinion a
portrait presents the paint~r or sculptor with a subject of great
plauic complexity, from which he can produce an integral work.
of art.
I have already said that painting and sculptuTt require not
only a knowledge of arl mechanisms, but also metaphysical
expression, and portrait painting emphasises this, because all
the factors required for a complete work of an appear in a
portrait.
I also believe that a portrait requires a high level of plastic
gymnastics. since it places the paimer and sculptor first and
foremost on an objective plane. We must finish with false
theories and advise the new Mexican painters and sculptors to
paim portraits as well.
(12) Who can criticist tht plastic arts'
Some maintain that only professional critics should speak
the generaJ public. 1 maimain that the only people who ca.n
COntribute adequately and in a way that will be useful to both
artists and to culture in general are those persons (bourgeois or
proletarian) who can be considered, on account of their
education and artistic experience, to be both more perceptive
and of bener taste than most of the illlellecwal public and the
popular masses. The truth is thal there have never been
professional art critics. Those who called themselves an critics,
have really been exaggerated eulogists of one school or another.
There is no doubt that in emotional matters where individual
sensitivity and sensuality count for most, phlegmatic eclecticism
 36 Art and Revolution
is impossible. Most of the so-called contemporary art critics are
grandiloquent poets who use painting and sculpture as a pretext
to wrile beauliful poems. As for the masses: the bourgeoisie is
characteristically nout/eau fiche; the middJe classes or petty
bourgeoisie have been educated by the bourgeoisie; and the
proletariat is the final receptacle of the had taste of the classes
which exploillhem and dominate them. The proletariat owes to
the bourgeoisie not only its economic oppression hut also its
abominable aesthetic taste. The radio playing the songs of
Agustin Lara, the gramophone and Yankee cinema are the
spiritual food of the masses: how then can they have oilier than
bad taste? Only the peasants still have traditional good taste,
because they are closer to our older culrures and further from
modern bourgeois culrure.
In spite of everything, it is only the educated minority ""ho
can adequately evaluate the plastic arts. It has always been so
and so it remains.
Plastic Arts in Mexico 37
the theory of pure art is the ultimate artistic objective. I should
add that there has never at any time or place in the world been a
manifestation of such an, and it could only exisl in a sociel)' with
no class struggle, with no politics; in a completely communist
sOCIety.
J fight for this type ofsociery because in doing so I am fighting
ror pure an. I also believe that a painter or sculptor should not
subord inate his aesthetic taste to that of the revolutionary
proleta.rian masses, because, as we have already seen, the taste of
the ma.o;scs has been pervened by the taste of the capitalist class.
In his painting or sculpture (he revolutionary anisl should give
expression to the desires of the masses, their objective qualities
and the revolutionary ideology of the proletariat; he muS[ also
produce good art. Serge Eisenstein, me great film maker, put
this very dearly when, on opening the exhibition ofmy work. he
said; uThe great revolutionary painter is a synthesis of the ideas
of the masses and their representation by an individual."

(I)) Social art or purt art (J 4) Tiu dUly ojpainteTJ and sculptors in soa~t) toda, is to collaboral~
Imellectuals all over the world are divided on this question. a~jtlutica/J) and pmoJUlil, with. lhe c/aJJ h.iJlori'aJl, d~stin~d to 'h.an.gt
Those who favour Pure An affirm mat there is nothing more th~ old j(J(:i~t} for th~ new
divorced from the class snuggle than the arts. They say it is The painters and sculptors oftoday cannot remain indifferent
possible to produce a work ofart in our present society, and that in the struggle to free humanity and art from oppression.
an is an individual, organic expression and that nothing can
perturb its creative process. They also maintain that social an is
necessarily anecdotal and political and therefore inferior as a
total an expression.
Those who favour social an, on the other hand. say mat anists
must pUt their work to the service of the proletariat in its
struggle against capitalism. We are living in times ofbiuer class
war, in imperialist times, in the final stages of the capitalist
regime, they say. The artist has only one possibility: he must
make up his mind to serve either the bourgeoisie or the
proletariat.
I support this tatter theory, but would like to dear up a few
points.
1 believe that painting and sculpture should selvc the
pro!clal'iat in their revolutionary class struggle. but I believe that

J

6 paintmg: the external frescoes In Los Angeles,
What "Plastic Exercise" is and
how it was done
(From the 8;q>lanalory le8flel produced wnen the mural "Plastic
Exereise" was inauguraled in December, 1933. in e private house in the
village of Don Torcuato. near Buenos Aires. the capital of Argentina. It
was "paintKl on 8 CUNed surface. and was an extraordinarily fruitful
8lq)fIrience in which I had as assistanls the famous Argerlline plIinters
Anlonio 8emi. Juan Carlos Castagni"O and Uno Eneas Spilirnbergo"J
The ttChniqUt
• Plastic EXUcUl IS a monumental pictoria..l work in an
interior.
• It was painted in modern fresco on cement, in a building
designed by the archjtectJorge Kalnay.
• It filled an architeaonic aerial space of ninety cubic metres
and covered 200 sGuare metres of surface.
• It is semi-cylindrical in shape.
• In making it we used modem tools, materials and
processes, inslead of archaic ones. In this we adhered to the
lnatcrial reality of our time, a fundamental premise fOI" all
Important work.
• We exclusively used mechanical elements:
A photographic camera instead of a pencil for the initial
Jilttchn
A mechanical brush instead of an ordinary brush made
of wood and bristle.
Flexible rules and varied resources-stone, metal,
vegetable, live, etc., as a complement.
There was only one antecedent in formal, monumental
"Plastic Exercise" 39
California.
• Instead of an immobile, academic (bench), we used a
transparent glass one, which was spatial, versatile, dynamic and
mechanical.
• We used a camera both to collect optical material and to
make final readjusonenlStoour work.
• We made the mosaic on which it stands, using a mortar of
previously coloured cement.
• We used artificial lighting as scenic complement 10 o.ur
work of art (never before attempted in formal, monumemal
painting).
• We worked collectively instead ofindividually. We fanned a
POLYGRAPHIC TEAM who carried out multiple photographic
projects. We thus coordinated our personal abilities and
enriched our creative potential.
• B}' working together daily on both large and small tasks, we
found a perfect method of learning and self-teachjng. This
provided us wim further proof of our conviction that the only
wa}' lO learn both the science and craft of paiming and graphics
is by participating in the total process of a piece of work.
o We also made an important discovery: we found out how to
touch up the fresco with silicates. The complementary practice
of touching up fresco palming had been lost after the Italian
Renaissance.
o Our work was purposely photogenic and "cil1e.genic" so
that it could be easily published and widely distributed. This was
important as, in itself, it was private and recondite.
Mtthodoiogy
• Plastic EXn'cise is a dynamic, monurnemal paiming for a
dynamiC spectator. Barnacled, static spectators, academic
cadavers and objectivist snobs will nOt really el~oy it.
o There was no previous sketch. We started directly on the
walls, and were inAuenced by architectural space as we
progressed. By living pcrmanemly with its geometry, we
developed and readjusted our work. There was nothing
artificial, everything was based on tbe architectonic skeleton

40 Art and Revolution
which organically complemented the geomerry of our work..
• In accordance with a basic premise of monumental,
pictorial art, we divid~d t.he geometr~cal St~clure o,r our
architectural field of actIon mto anatomIcal SectiOns, whIch we
previously analysed objectively. This was the basis of our
composition. ... . took into account the logical points from which his work would
• By working out an mfinite senes of hannomous correia·
lions be£ween all the facets of our architectonic anatOmy. and
then relating these to each other with interspatial co.nnecti~>ns.
we were able to integrate perfenly balanced reAec~lOns: S1Ze~.
weights and dimensions (all active) into the lOlal Intenor air
space of our geometric body. Our work could therefore also be
called a "Plastic Box",
• Pla.JJic ExtTci.se is a versatile, spcclacular, scenographic.
active painting. It is versatile because it makes TOTAL USE of th.e
archilectonic structure and infrastructure, and also because II
gyrates in hannony ~'ith the mo\'e~em of the specla~or. ,
• In active pictonaJ an the optIcal phenomenon IS ~bt~lIne.d
by making use of Ihe geometrical tOPO~P,~Y. of archlt~~Omc
space. The "trick" we used here looked like VIsual magIc, and
was obtained by making multiple dynamic use of the VIsual
perspecliv(o. , .
• We worked out the dynamics of our construction With
regard to the dynamics of spectator movement, and wer~ ,thUS
able to ime~'eave visible and invisible plasric superposlIIons,
which were both fonnal and informal, sometimes voluminous
sho:lpes, sometimes simply arabesque.s, but ah,,:'ap correS-
ponding to the infinite number of places from which the work
could be viewed,
• In order to give ExerciJr dynamic action, we mounted it on a
frame with parallel and concentric circumferences. and from
this we obtained an unlimited multiplicity of correlated curves
and straight lines. . ,
"We broke with the tradition of stanc photographIc
reproduction, and obt.ain~d dynamic pholOgr'dphic .repro-
duclion~ by the use of a cme camera. Instead of placmg the
camera symmetrically in front of tbe. pans we wante.d to
pholOgraph, we kepI it moving, followmg the path logIcally
"Plastic Exercise" 41
taken by a spectator. We did not place benches which would give
arbitrary points of view. We used the camera as though it were
the eye of a normal spectator. In this way. we broke awa.y from
the deadly, academic form of photographic reproduction,
which even today provides us with fiCtitious versions of the great
works of art of antiquity, which were painted by an artist who
be seen and incorporated this into his work. Our fonn of
photography allowed us to give live, complete phot?graphs,
rather Ihan mummified, academic ones. It also contnbutes to
the fannation of a new idea in art photography, which can iuelf,
independently of the object being photographed, be a work. of
creative art.
• In look.ing for methods of publicising our work, we found
that of "FlIMAHLE ART" or "CINE·PHOTOGENtC ART", i,e. art with
the preconceived notion of being filmed; an conceived
scientifically and with pre-meditation so that it can be filmed
with the idea of producing superlatively dynamic art, but yet
without relinquishing its autonomous value as a static work of
an.
• Its quality of pictorial.filmable-art stems from the visual
"magic" inherent in descriptive geometry, infinitely enhanced
by the search for active art of the highest potentiality. .
• In our opinion PICTORIAL-CIN[MATOGRAPHIC-ART IS more
complete than objective-realist filming, because it requires from
its authors not only organisation and combination of
cinematographic values and elements with real, IiV(' materials,
but also the creation of prime, filmable object-matter.
'" The union of monumental painting with cinematography,
which we have discovered. is the most powerful means of
disseminating Graphic An to the masses.
• External, monumemal plastic art belongs to the permanent
and floating masses of a town, FILMED MONUMEf'I.'TAL ART belongs
to all the towns, to all humanity. It is the highest expression of
public art.
• Leon Klimovsky is already at work filming P{aJ~ic Exer~u.
• Plasbc Exercise is a live class of art and graphiCS. It IS the
result of the active method of learning. It is the product of a
42 Art and Revolution
totally superior machine for producing an: the only machine
possible in these times. It is the vehide of expression of our
times: mechanics and group work joined with a combination of
various expressions of art and graphics in a common effort with
highly creative intentions. We use mechanics because the only
vehide capable of expressing dynamic art must be mechanical.
The Italian futurists did not undersland this, and so perished in
defence of an abstract theory of movement. Their bierwa~easel
painting. The "enemies of anachronism" died of anachronism.
Of course. now they are fascists.
• P!a.stic E:urds~ is obviously only an initial demonstration of
the (ruth of our general theory of modem an. Jr is merely the
first halting step along me road of dynamic an for the masses
of the world, which is opening before us. The antecedents
of this road are few and dearly defined. Up to now there
have only been "snapshots" of movemem (Pablo Uccello.
forexampld. This an movement has)'et tobebuih; we still have
(0 construct the living vision of movement for movement by
movement, and this could only be done in our times. The static.
museum art of objective, passive, emotional, pseudo-modem
{pre-cubistS, cubists, post-cubists, popular and archaic Mexican
muralists, neo·dassicists, metaphysical realists, etc.} are not in
tune with this coming world and will be worthless during the
long, very active period of the future.
SQClal Projection
• Plastic Ext'YciJe is NOT an ideologically revolutionary ""'ork,
by which I mean that it is not a work ofdirect, immediate use to
the revolutionary proletariat in their present struggle against
capitalism. Pl(lltic Exercise has no proletarian, revolutionary
contem. It is not a work. which will foment revolutionary activity
in the masses. It has no direct, political bdligerence. h is not
psychologically subversive. Neither in form or content is it
revolutionary.
» In a solitary and distant private residence, and in the most
private place of that residence, it could not be revolutionary (so
thought the majority of the team who made it). It could only be
C'llTied alit there, because of demagogic causes, which we could
"Plastic Exercise" 43
not accept. The art of the proletarian struggle must be calTied
out in (he so·eets.
" As irs name indicates, Plastic ExtTcu( is only a projcrt of
abstract art, only a group an exercise, art practice, dynamic,
technical, plastic GYMNASTICS, carried out by painters with
revolutionary convictions, both as individuals and as pan of a
group.
" We, the authors of Plastic Ext'YcUe, formed a technical and
ideological team, and we accepted the commission for this work
because we realised the opportunity it gave us. It gave Wi the
opportunity to practise the mechanics of dynamic an, the
mechanics of group work and the method of dialectical
construction of dynamic art, which was indispensable in order
to be a.ble to produce the totally revolutionary an which was our
objective. Our team was preparing the way to become the
focal point of greater. more complex and more powerful
projects.
• P!.aJtic EurcUe, a casual commission, for which we worked
on a salary basis (this will only disappear when our-society does)
is an initial CONTRIBlITtON to revolutionary forms and art both in
this time of struggle and in the victorious times of the future.
" It isa revolutionary contribution because it isan example of
dialectic method applied 10 an expression of plastic an; because
it is a collective effon: because of its mechanical technique;
because of its psychological activism; because of its d}·namism
and documental reality; because of its monumental drive; and
because of ils artistic equivalence which belongs to the future
world of the workers; because of the great optimism of its ardent
lyricism; because it experimenls with elements which will
certainly be needed 10 build a revolutionary pictorial work of
plastiC art, in lhe open air, in the sunShine, for the great masses
of the future and also for realising the vitally necessary
simultaneous, active, mass- reproduction of an in this present
period of semi-illegality or illegality of the revolutionary
proletariat.
» When instead of "Academies", active studies, nudes,
exercises in technique, we revitalize subjects with a [Orally
revolutionary content, in the open air, then the importance of
44 Art and Revolution
this experiment and the use we made of these circumstances will
be appreciated.
• A work of art does not express itself in [enTIS of class or
society through dil eel political images; it expresses itself by
means of aesthetic equivalences. Otherwise how could we
revolutionaries call abstraCt an a bourgeois expression? Works
of an are a "chemical-physical" reRenion of the motor which
drives them; they are the synthesis and pure extract of thaI
mOlor.
• This explains why work like Plastic Exnroe which
contdbutes rC\'o!ulionary technique and methodology can only
be considered as the reflection of a revolutionary mOl or, of
rc\'olutional} social dynamic;, An old mOlor, on the poim of
burning out, Ihe decrepit motor of !.he intcllenual bourgeoisie,
can onl)' gi,-e birth to pale anistic expressions in those dark
offic-ial academies disguised as liberal, modern schools.
• P[OJlic ExrrclJt is a revolutionan cOrllriburion because it is
an achi('vem('m (howe'\:('r rudimcn~ry) of dynamic an ....,hich is
both documentary and capable of being reproduced, all of
which areessemial qualiliesof revolutionary an. It is as dynamiC
in its fonn as in its social content. It \\'ill be as human and
realistically dynamic as the size of its surroundings and the
number of its speCtalOrs, who by reHection also have a part in its
construction. II must be multiple ifit is to belong to all men. If
revolutionary an means spectacular, theatrical, multi-
dimensional art; active for a spectator caught up in the most
violent activity the world has known; an impulsive an which
inspires tbe masses, then there is no doubt lhat Plastic Extrcijt
contributes to this in its form, technique and methodology in
spitt' of the remiclions imposed on it by the place where it was
done and its abstract theme.
.. There is no doubt that it will contribute ro an absolutely
revolutionary improvement in plastic and graphic an.
.. All revolutionary artists will soon realise the truth of this. I
am quite sure of this.
Buenos Aires, Argentine Republic, December 1933.
$
7
Towards a Transformation of the
Plastic Arts
{Plans for a manifesto and study programme for studio-schools of
painting ,mel sculpture, written by SiQueirOI In New York, 19341
Paimers, sculptors. engravers, newspaper illustrators,
photographers, architects (Mexicans, South Americans, North
Americans. Europeans), we have decided [0 Jomrot an
international movement to transfonn lheplastk orO.
Our movement is based on critical analysis of the two great
contemporary an experiences: the Paris movement and the
modern Mexican movement usually known as the Mexican
Renaissance. Both lh~jt movtments art djjinttgrating today.
One of our valuable antecedents is the mechanical ttthniques
used by Siqueiros in the groups he formed in Los Angeles and
Buenos Aires; the Mural Paintm Group of Los Angtltl and the
Polygraphic ltam ~ Bumoj Aim.
What dQ we warn.'
We wam to produce an art which will be physically capable of
serving the public through its maltrialJorm. Tnle an fOnTIS which
will reach far and wide. This art mUSl be commercialized
according to the possibilities of each country, in order to avoid
the bourgeois elitism of European an and the tourUt-ariented
burtau.cracy of Mexican art. We must rid ourselves of the
European Utopia of art for art's salce, and also of Mexican
dtmagogic opportunism. We must put an end to superficial folA art,
of the type called "Mexican Curious" which predominates in
 -
46 Art end Revolution
Mexico today, and substitute for it an art which is
internationally valid !.hough based on local antecedents and
functional elements.
We must coordinate our abilities and experiences and work
together as a technical learn. We must put an end to the tgo·
unlri$m of modern European an and the false colltctiuism of
official Mexican an, with its "socialism", We shall both learn
and teach our new an in the cours~ of producing it: thtory and
prtulitt will go togtther. We shall put an end [0 sterile verbal didattic
teaching. which has produced nothing of value in the last fouf
hundred years of academism, and which even today is stilll.he
only method of teaching an bot.h in Mexico and all over the
world.
We must male use of all the modnn loob and maJeriab which
serve the purpose of our an, and put an end [0 the incredible
technical anachronism to be found in Mexico and Europe.
Instead, we shall establish the fundamental premise that arl
fn(Jvnnmls should alwaJs d~lNlop in aWJTdana UJlJh. llit ttchni!a1
pOJJibiljli~s of thtir tzgt. Modem technique and mechanics have
made such enonnous progress that they can enrich our creative
capacity be')"ond our wildest imagination. Unfortunately artists
tOday seem to know nothing of the science and technology from
which their materials evolve, and their knowledge is restricted to
knowing in which shop to buy them. Modem industry has made
revolutionary changes in the chemisrry of pigments which
modern artists lnow nothing whatever about.
We must develop a polygraphi! art which will combine both
plastic and graphic an and provide a greater potential for
a~tistic expression. Art must no longer be separated into units,
enher pure painting or pure sculpture, it must find a new, more
powerful, more modern language which will gi....e it much
grealer repercussion and validity as an art expression.
We must use ntw, dialectic forms, rather than dtad, scholarly,
mechanical ones. We must evolve a dynamU: graphi! art in tune with
the dynamism oj tht world loda.y, and we must rid cUI·selves of
mysticism, of snobbish "archaeologiJm", and the other defects of
modern an in both Europe and Mexico.
Our an must have a real scimlific basis. We must get rid of lhe
Transformation of the Plastic Arts 47
tmpirirum, and emotivism which have characterised the art
movemenLS of the world until today. Forthe first time in history,
we shall find scimiifit truths which can be proved, either
physically, chemically, or psychologically. In this way we will be
able to forge a strong connection between art and science.
We must foment the teaching of txttrior mu.ral painting, public
painting, in the street, in the sunlight, on the sides of tall
buildings instead of the advertisements you see there now, in
strategic positions where the people can see them, mechanically
produced and materially adapted to the realities of modern
construction. We must put an end to tourist-inspired Mtxitan
muralum with its archaic technique, and bureaucracy; murals
painted in out of the way places and which only emerge from
hiding in select monographs published for foreign amateurs.
We will be preparing ourselves for me society of the future, in
which our type of art will be preferred to all others, because it is
the effective daily ocpression of art for the masses.
We shall, oj count, conserve all the absolute values of the
other art movements, because we feel that tradition is an
accumulation of experiences on which our work must be based.
This is even more important since our movement is a classical
movement, in as much as it responds to the social and technical
realities of the moment in which it exists.
We shall give practical form to our theories by creating
lJJQTluhop schoob of plmtit and graphic art, from which we shall
exclude archaic, livid monocopy forms and procedures, such as
easel painting; ....-e shall exclude everything which cannot be
reproduced, we shall exclude exhibitions in "distinguished"
galleries for the benefit of amateurs and critics, expenSive
limited editions, in fact evelJ'thing which can be considered art
for the private collectOr and for a privileged elite. In t.his way we
shall be consequential with our own period of histOry, and
we shall be anticipating the art forms of the future. In this
way we shall provide an immediate and evidem service to the
great masses and to all humanity.
tn our workshop schools we will develop polychromed engraving
(both the traditional and, more especially the modem),
polychramed lithography (traditional and modern); large editions of
7
48 Art and Revolution

pQlychromed PQjlm (mechanically prinLed); PhotQ4engraving (by

experimental methods); scmogmphy; applied painltng (on
standards. flags. posten, curtains and commercial an);
reproducible polychromed sculpture (made ofcement, plaSlercemeol
and all other modern materials); photo-genU: palTlling <all our
anwork. must be able to be phOlographically reproduced);
photo.mornagt, dicki montage (applicable lO all kinds of graphic
reproduCfionl; docummiary photography and cinnna; manual and
mechanical priming (Ihe problem of printing is fundamemallo
all popular art); modan muraJ painling (on cement, with silicates.
using a spray gun and other applicable tools or mechanical
means such as e1ect:ro~ceramics, etc.); tht chffllicai theory and
Jmutice of pigmtnlJ and all other art materia1.J ho prove the greac
superiority of modem materials over traditional ones);
dtKriptlvt gtomttry and IndWtrilJl drawing; the JOCIal hiJJ.ory oJtht artJ
(rather than anecdolisml.
As for publicity, we shall have simultantous exhibitums (in
private buildings belonging to organisations and in public
places; at home and abroad); cO-OTdinaJ.td txhibltUms (ofmultiple
painting and photogenic an); we will publish popular monographs
(at prices accessible to the people); we shall set up ptTTTUJnmJ JaltS
pOJtJ (in (Owns and villages, in factories. etc); we will try to make
dirtct JaitJ oj ptTJonaL worlt. (in order to help our collaborators,
ete.>. Our workshop schools will have a publicity section which
will take charge of this commercial programme and invent new
saJes methods, because we feel that our economic development
depends on our finding a way to commercialise our products in
accordance with the possibilities of the masses.
NewYork,June.1954'
8
Letter from the Front Line
in Spain
(To the authoress, Marl Teresa Leon de Alberti, April 27th, 19381
Dear Maria Teresa,
I was so happy to get your leuer. I had already lost hope of
ever hearing from you two again.
OnJanuary 9th I wrote you a very long lener. a copy of which
I encloSt'. It tells )·ou all about my trip to Mexico and how often r
think about you both.
I am working very hard. r was in command of Group NO.2 in
the Sierra Herrera operation. Recently. in the Sordo operation,
J was liaison officer for Colonel Burillo. commander of the
Extremadura army. Then I was given the job of fanning me
29th Division. As commander of my old brigade, I have been in
charge of the Puente del Arzobispo sector. in Sierra Altami~
and it is possible that within the next few days ~y command wtll
be extended to include Guadalupe, J am quite pleased about
this. as it provides me with more problems and as you know
there is nothing better in life than a problem. The harder and
more complicated the better.
Well. war is like modern art (hardly as envisaged in my
obsessive solitary attempts}-it is mechanics and ph~sic~,
chemistry and geometry. geography and cadence. It IS
equilibrium and synthesis. War, like an, can express in one g~
both the positive and negative of human n~tI:,re. So ther,e IS
nothing surprising in my returning to my ongu:tal profeSSIon,
the one J praCtised in my already somewhat distant youth. I

t
50 Art and Revolution
rather feel I have gained something by it, perhaps war suits my
hasey, impatient nature.
Curiously enough, as you will sec. in both war and an I spend
my lime fighting against me academicians. I will give you a short
example.
The academic soldier considers defence to be rigid
containment of the enemy offensive. His only aim and purpose
is that the enemy shall not pass. But I, a functional iSl in both wa r
and art, conceive defence as an offensive, because it is really a
coumer-offensive; it implies infinite mobility. The academic
defends and fortifies a line; we functionalistS defend and fortify
a zone and fill it with traps. They work. ana linear plane while we
work in spatial depth. The academic only sees one facet, the
functionalist has a multi·facNed view of the problem. (It is the
same thing with painting-the academician paintS flat pictures
within the limitS of a frame, whereas the muralist is functiona1.)
We functionalists conceive our fortifications in topographical
terrm; they must be the living expression of the forms to be
found in local topography. You might say that the basic
functionalist concept of fortification is mimicry, because the
fundamental object is that the fortification should be resistant,
but also that it should be both objectively and subjectively
camouflaged; the scenograph)' is important. (You write to me of
stage design, and as you can see I am doing some military
scenography myselO. However, the academic conception of
fortification is totaJly isolated. from the surroundings. He feels
that there are good plans for fortifications, trenches and refuges.
He talks in formulae, like a treewith no roots in the ground. The
old academic builds linear trenches and the new academic
builds square trenches. The functionalist conceives of
fortifications as active, changing and varied as nature itself, with
its moulltains, plains and so on. He feels that fortifications
should be in accordance with the naUlre of me terrain.
And here's another thing.
The academician says: the enemy must not pass; he must not
breach the line anywhere, he must not overrun the line. The
functionalist says: he must not occupy the zone, he must not
overrun the lone. For the academician the advance posts (what
Letter from the Front Une in Spain 51
he calls tbe front line) are fragile. i.e. if too much pressure is
brought to bear on them they may break. Butlhe advance POSts
of the functionalist are elastic; if they are pressed too hard, they
stretch as the enemy expends his offensive and then snap back,
when the time comes, with all the strength of a coiled spring. In
academic defence, when the line is broken, there is inevitably a
withdrawal (or drastic retreat) to a second line of defence and so
on. It is obvious that in war as in an, the academician conceives
of spatial depth as a series of curtains situated one behind the
other at more or less equal intervals. Here is the number one
defence line; here is the number two defence line, etc., etc: The
functionalist has a more integral concept of defence, which
COVeTS the whole area, both Banks and rearguard, in fact every
yard of the defensive zone. There are no neutral spaces between
one line and another; there are no stages. He does not conceive
of defence like a game of chess with a rigid and inevitable
pallern of movements; his defensive moves cover the whole area
and the whole problem in every possible direction.
What do you think? Isn't there a great similarity between
camouJlag~ and the spatial organization of your stage design? In
war as in other things. there is a violent struggle between
formalism, rhetoric and dialecucs. This is why anyone who
really wants to and has an active rather than a passive. isolated
view of his problems. can do good work anywhere. I shall try
and send you some ofmy articles on military instruction, mobile
troop transport, etc., so that you can sc(' in rather more detail
what I am doing at the present time.
I could carry on writing, with my habitual spate of words,
which used to afford us amusement wben we were together in
Mexico and Paris ... but the fact is thal my unit is about to
change its position and the orderlies are making such a racket
that my beloved assistant, the big little lieutenant Belmar, who is
typing this lener for me, can hardly hear me dictate.
You ask me about Mexican theatre. Except for Ruil. de
Alarcon and a play, which Juan de la Cabaoa is sdll thinking
out, I can't think where I could dig up any for you. However I
should like to remind you of some plays by Madalena y de Oro
which I believe have already been published in Spain. Ofcourse,
52 Art and Revolution
I have no idea of what's been happening in the past two years.
I have no news arMaria, she hasn't written for five months. If
she answers me letter I am sending by the same POst as this, I will
9
write and tell you. War time. War art
I am sorry to hear about Rafael and hope you will soon find
out whallhe matter is: it is important for him to get belter soon. (ManifBsto first published in the double number 8--9 of Form~.
January.....february. 1943. in Santiago. Chile. preceded by the following
Has he done much wriLing lately? I should like to read his latest
flOle: "Shonly before leaving for the States. SiQueiros gave the
work. Associllted PrllSS the following manifesto iniliating his campaign to gel
Before 1 finish, J would like to make a small correction ofyour American anisls 10 aid the war effort of the United Nalioos through their
spelling: the Mexican says, "Q.uiubole" not "Que hubole" art"l
("Whassup with him?" not "What's up with him?"),
I embrace you both.

Painters, sculptors, engravers, poets, novelists. writers,

musicians and actors: it is not enough for )'ou to participate
personally in anti-fascist activities. There are others who are
better suited to organising meetings and raising funds.
The war effort needs your art; it needs your creativity and the
incomparable eloquence of which you are capable.
Your contribution will not be slight, because we need precise
ideology and the technique that goes with it.
There must be team work and communal work-shops
wherever possible.
ThtT~ must be a antral coordinlJ!ing bodyJor war art.
Ther~ must bt a team ~ war graphic! and painttn who must
produce drawings and engravings, posters (both printed and
hand paimed), external murals, internal murals, blown-up
photographic murals, polychrome sculptures, curtains (net) and
other scenographic painting which may be necessary in the
theatre of war, etc.
There must be a ttam of war wrilm who must write words for
songs, marches, hymns, salires about bombastic Nazi leaders,
daily news affifth column intrigues, war poems. warstories, war
novels, war plays, etc.
A learn for llu!atr~ and choreography, to perfonn the plays written
54 Art and Revolution
by members afthe writers team, and collaborate-closely with the
other teams. They would perfonn atall sorts ofplaces and on all
sorts of occasions. either in theatres or wherever they are
needed.
A cinema unit who would further develop and perfect what is
already being done in their line, and would also collaborate
dosely with the other units.
A mwical unit would collect popular songs appropriate 10 the
war effon and write lhem down; they would also compose new
songs, marches, hymns, etc., in dose collaboration with (he
other groups.
You must fight daily both in the from line and the rearguard,
(and in the enemy from line and real-guard as well) against all
the Axis demagogy and crimes, you must expose their pseudo
racial doctrines, deslroy !.he defeatist intrigues of the fifth
column and deSlToy tile enemy's morale. And you must do all
you can to strengthen our own morale--the morale of the
fighting forces and the industrial workers.
You artists, and the governments of your countries must
understand that art can become as powenul an ann of war as
any that the annie!use in their battles. It is an arm which attacks
through the eyes, and ears ... and through the deepest and most
subtle human feelings.
Therefore every democractic governmem in America must
give ample economic aid to these artistic units, because they
must be supplied with the most modern equipmem and be
allowed to operate on a very wide field ofaction, etc.
All pmgressive organisation and aU artists should demand
suPPOrt for these artistic units.
War art against the Axis, daily. in many forms, with
eloquence, and perennial creativity, and geared to win not only
freedom for humanity and the right to nadonal determination
for all peoples, but also the right LO build in the future world A
I'UBL.lCARTFOR PEACE and this should be our slogan,
D.... VID .... LfARO SIQ.U1f.ROS-representing the man) Mexican,
American, Argentinian, Spanish. and Chilean painters whoJor the laJt
twelve yean haveJoined me in my endeavoursJOT pu&lic art
•
10
Jose Clemente Orozco. the
formal precursor of our painting
(This arucle was published three times; II first appeared In No. 39a of
the magazine Hoy. on December 7th, 1944, under the title "letter to
OrOlCO on vi$iting the litxhibilion of Ills paintings. drawinQll and
engravings al the National School, which opened on September 25th
and runs u"'til October 25tn".lt taler appeared n one of the chaplers of
mv book OUr$ is the Only W.y(Mexlco D. F.. 19451 with the same title
as this chapter: and finally it was di...Jded Into two parts and publisned in
1946 on September ath end 9th In the rlt!wspeper Excelsior ullder the
title "Jose Oemente Orozco'·)
My dear friend and esteemed colleague, Orozco:
Your exhibition has inspired me to write you a public letter.
My object in 50 doing is to bring OUt several subjects which you
and I have been discussing extensively of late, I sincerely hope
they will be of some help to the authentically modern art
movement, both in Mexico and all over the world. Neither your
work nor mine, nor that of any others who belong to our
movement, can ~vtr be classed as having occurred "biologically
and spontaneously". Because of the way in which our work is
conceived and brought to life, its fundamemal aesthetic
physiognomy, in monumental heroic tone, it cannOl be classed
as the miraculous metaphysical produClion of "exceptional
individuality", wilh no specific origin, which the panegyrical
poets who pass for an critics in Mexico seem to lhink your work
is. Our poetical art c!'itics, some of whom are sincere, while
others. are not, are only very poor colonial copies of the poetical
an critics found in Europe loday, Our work is determined by
hislOl"ical social causes, it is an imegral. living part of a
56 Art and Revolution
Jose Clemente Orozco 57
colleClivc, intellectual movement, of a common aesthetic drive
How otherwise can you explain our urge to make our.plastic
which developed along with our collective, national political arts as monumental, social and public as they were dur~g the
aspirations, which probably form pan of a world wide pauern.
great periods of Mexican history.? How else to. explam ou~
Why should people be so blind to this very obvious fact?
interest in the problems of mankmd an~ of socI,al pro~ess,
In the first place, mese critics have forgonen that basic logical
How else to explain our new humalllsm WblCh, Without
principle which says that "you cannol judge the achievemeoLS or
fonnulating ilS theories. even before the strike ~f 1911, already
fully appreciate Lhe details of an)' historical phenomenon,
fanned the essence of our intellectual purpose In an art world
unless Lhey are examined in their COntext". In other words "you
cannot see lhe wood for me trees". totally isolaled from the dir~t proble~ns of every d~y ~ociety"
lost in an Epicurean sensuality, morbid, domesuc, Gldean,
As you know, our eulogists with meir talk of "creative in short decadent, so characteristic of aesthetics at the tum of
criticism" resemble nothing more than those fanatical critics
the cenrury, .
of the bullring, each of whom .supportS his own favourite
With the exception of Dr, Au who had the honour of bemg
bullfighter and looks no further; but of course mey write their
me first, no one has played a greater part th,an you in th.e w.hole
criticisms in the most "poetic" style, and it is nOl only useless,
but somelimes inspired by unconfessable mouves. They are nm process of the Mexican revolution, from Its \':-f')' b~nnmgs.
through the period of its development and the cnses which came
lhe only ones who saw confusion; they receive daily and
at a later date. Diego Rivera's participation was not as great as
vociferous aid from many of our academic and purist
your own, because he only really became involved after 1921,
colleagues, who wish to further their own particular ends.
when he returned to Mexico, or perhaps from 1919 when,
I shall therefore avoid lhis highly inconvenient method and
through his relationship with me; he established contact with
start with a somewhat bare analysis of the hislodcaJ
circumstances. the political and aesthetic non-conf?~mism of~e:xican yo.uth at
Modem Mexican painting is first and foremon the expression the time, a youth which had paruopated ~ , mt~nse.ly In ~e
military period of tile civil war. My own.paruClpauon began m
of Ihe Mexican revolution in the field of cuhure. It would be
191 I, with the strike in the School of Fmc ~rts. Everyone else
incorrect to say thai its only source was the important pre-
came in at a later date. Further, 1 do not thmk that the mental
Hispanic and Colonial culture of Mexico. because Guatemala,
vicissitudes of the Mexican revolution are quite as evident in the
Honduras, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. to a greater or lesser
work of any painter as in your o~ .. t must tell you ~at 1
degree, also have the same cultural background. Had it not been
for the Mex.ican revolution, contemporary Mexican paiming sincerely believe that both your. pamung a~d your polll1~­
aesthetic theories are the most faithful reAecuon of everythmg,
would have been as intellectually colonial and as domestically
both positive and negative, which existed during the
snobbish as it was in pre~revolutionary Mexico and as it still is in
Spain and the rest of Latin America. Had it not been for the revolutionary, iconoclastic period of arl.
revolution, it is more man possible that you and other gifted Let us examine what 1 have just said, . .
You first became involved at the ume of the first anu-
Mex.ican paimers would have been forced to emigrate, like
oligarchic demonstralions, which later combined with the
Picasso, Gris and Dali, to a more fertile social environment,
armed fight to produce the Mexican revolution. The essence of
because the Spanish-type academism which was found in all the
your artistic thought and your painrin,g undoubtedly reflect the
"schools" was a reRection of the political situation. The only
earliest beginnings of the revolutionary movement. You
ahcrnative was to asphyxiate in the Stuffy soda-intellectual
environmem. yourself have stated that this was a direct consequen.c~ or the
advanced political and aesthetic ideas of Ad, our pohucal and
58 Art and Revolution
intellectual precursor, the theoretician of our movement. He
was inspired in Europe and particularly in Italy by the teachings
of the famous sociaJist, Enrico Ferri. Your interest in art was not
only Stimulated by the popular feelings prevalent all over
Mexico against the elitist aristocracy of the oligarchy ofPorfirio
Diaz, it was inspired by the most progressive sector of this
feeling. What other reason could have caused you to rebel
against the formal academic teaching practices of the time in
favour of more popular subjects, such as your famous pictures
of night life in the back streets and slums of the capiQI city?The
Pomrian francophilistic idea of beauty which centred on the
decadem period at the end of the nineteenth cemury. totally
rejected your choice of subject which they felt was scandalous
and exposed our coumry to shame. Your artistic feeling for the
people was born of the political popular movement of the time.
I have no doubt that this was th~ piaoTial expression of your
hatred ofthe dictator and was the beginning of th~ neo-humanistic
movement lO which w~aJl came; it is of no imponanc~whether
you ard\'~d at your position insu[)(;tively or through political
reasoning. The important thing is that you did it, that )·ou drew
your inspiration from your surroundings. You ar~ a man of
detds more than of words, mor~ praaicaJ than theor~tical, an
exc~l1ent anist, and with your innat~ ability you created the first
and best art foons of what was later to become our movement.
ALI taught us the first letters of our doctrinaire alphabet, which
we have not yet completed, and you gave us the first letters of
our artistic alphabet. Goitia was another like yourself, he also
fought actively during me revolution.
You then ex.pressed yoUl· intellectual involvemem in a
practical way by becoming a diren militant in the revolutionary
rank.s. It was no longer enough for you to express your anti·
aristocratic feelings in your pictures; you became the official
artist of the Constitutionalist Army's field paper La Vangt«lrdia,
which was directed by Dr. At!. You joined the group of student
agitators who were attracted to the Revolution by the idea of
social change; with them )'ou formed part of the famous "La
Manigua" group in Orizaba, Vera Cruz. Instead ofjust painting
pictures of popular life, you began painting polemical, anti·
Jose Clemente Orozco 59
clerical pictures--l:he best ami-derical pictures ever produced
in Mexico. This was the perfect occasion for you to give full rein
to the sarcastic ;conodasr you carry within you, to the universal
Jacobin who unfOrtunalely appeared later. And while Au
remained the theoretical precursor and the first civil artist, and
was the first to negate the parasitic, bohemian concept of the
artist, both in his post as director of the Carranza Army
newspaper and through his activity in organising the Red
Battalions of workers in the capital, you were the artistic
precursor or the incipient school of Mexican social art, which
fathered the international movement of social art. This was the
second stage in your contribution to the creation of our art
form; the first was your cirawings of ordinary people. Goitia,
though in a less direa and dialectical manner, followed the
same course with his vivid, realistic paintings and drawings of
the civil war. Although these anti-derical drawings of yours
were smaJl in size, they were monumental in their historical
COntext, because they were public; I do not think an)·one could
say that these drawings: are less important as a form of artistic
expression than the more technically advanced murals that you
have painted in me last few years. Is it really possible to believe
in the absurd, pseudo-modern criteria of Paris, that concrete
political expression cannot be artiStic and that the only true
source of art is abstruse and poetic? This is a lie, a wicked lie
invented by the enemies or social art; they say that the great art
or the past has always been obscure and not concrete or
ideological. Was Egyptian mythology obscure? Or the
mythology or Greece and the Mayas and Incas? Was the
dogmatic subject matter of the Christians during the middle
ages, or the Byzantines, the Goths, of Cimabue, Giono,
Masaccio, etc., was that obscure? Was the religious painting of
the Renaissance, which gave rise to the Reformation, obscure?
Was the religious art of colonial Mexico obscure? Never! It was
both clear and specific. The decadent painting of today is both
obscure and abstruse, subjected as it is to the social concept of
the art gallery, of the expensive monograph, of me glossy
magal.in~, of the monstrous limitation of printS and
lithographs, and also to the mercenary critics who are an
60 Art and Revolution
iOlegral pan of the speculative, commercial aspect of the an
world.
Your third concern and your third practical contribution
manifested itself in your immediate and loral adhesion (0 our
collective decision ~o paint murals. YOUI' concern and" practice
helped. make possible a beller revolutionary programme of
education, OUT famous Barcelona manifesto--which was the
first theoretical fonnulaLion of your aims-and me malOTt'
~ezann.e-inspired "constructivism" of Diego Rivera. You
Im~ne~la(ely declared yourself in favour of the supreme
obJee.u.ve of modem Limes, the restoration under present social
condl!lOns of a public an Conn, such as had been characteristic
of all !.he great art periods of history. You gave yourself up
completely ro a movement which was to lead to the nnu cia-meUm
which t?t" Frt"nch ~ad sought. from David to Ingres. and
from Cezanne (0 PIcasSO. through imprecisely defined paths
of a purely objective nature--ftfrom the canvas to the
infinite"-which nevertheless left intact the physical, material
and .there.fore social forms. Your new position was the logical
conunuauon of your previous political activity. In the first
place, you. in company with aU Mexican progressives. dedicated
your thoughts. and work to the people; }'ou then used your art as
a weapon which fought daily and directly on the side of the
people; and then you broadened me scale of your an because
you understood that truly social art can only be transmiued
thro~gh s.ocial forms, that it must be public and large in size.
And In thiS you were no ordinary contributor. You cOOlributed
a more important sense of form to our common cause which
was still.in its infancy. still popular. primitive, ethnographic and
folk-lo~lc; you gave our pictorial form a more dynamic
profeSSIonal technique, which was connected to the art of the
~nd. o.fthe Renaissance and the Baroque periods, and also to the
Indlvl.dual and sporadic~pressiomwhich had appeared during
~he ~~neteenth cemury. m Europe. It is my opinion that you
Illtultlvely understood that a return to mural ism did not mean a
return to primitive techniques-an error in which most of our
anists still persist. You understood thal a muralist must use the
most advanced techniques available in order to make his work
Jose Clemente Orozco 61
more socially eloquent. Because. my dear Orozco. no matter
what they say-those aesthetes who caU themselves modern yet
continually look to the past-there must always be progress and
improvement both in art as in science, as in the whole concept of
society. But someming else also appear-cd in your work at this
period; while orner artists remained faithful (0 or were attraCted
by the subjectivist, "metaphysical" deviations of the French
pseudo-modern tendencies, you remained substantially faithful
to me ideology of functionality and to the objective of social
eloquence; you were as powerful a political cartOonist on the
walls as you had been on paper. It is unimportant that this was
intuitive rather than reasoned; neither is it imponant or to the
point that your ideological development was so immature, so
vacillating and at times contradictory or e\fcn destructive,
because at mat time we were all like that. You showed the
way for others to progrl':Ss. but no one progressed as far as you
did.
Your founh concern was with the fight against fascism, and at
the same time as you were painting your murals you also
collaborated in our graphics campaign against me rise of
fascism. Thus the popular an of your first period was later
supplamed by )'our anti-clerical and pro-revolutionary an, and
this in turn was enriched by your fight against the powerful
enemy which threatened our newly born democracy. With us.
you understood that mural an could nOt reach everybody in the
coumry and mat me artists must produce work. which could be
mass reproduced by mechanical means. And so you became the
pennanent cartoonist, always on time with your work, of our
first paper El MachLle, which was the organ of our Syndicate of
artists. Your work on that paper gives you the right to be called
the most importam anti-fascist cartoonist of Mexico and
perhaps of the whole continent, since ours was the first anti-
fascist paper in America. In spite of the difference of technique,
it can be said that just as your murals were superior to your
earlier work, so your newspaper work was superior to your
murals as regards ideological synthesis and the polemical
strength of its politics. There is no doubt that these are
intrinsically your best drawings lO dare. Perhaps they are the
 62 Art and Revolution
most important political drawings which the Mexican artistic
movement has yet produced. But it must be emphasised that you
were working in a less isolated situation when you produced
these drawings, mey were the result of the learn work which
necessarily exiSls in a paper with a political platform. Here,
more than pr~iously. four creative pOlemial derived vigour
and nourished itself on the ideological and tactical political
studies of many people; for !.his reason your work was the direct
result of our social an movement, with the nalUraI
characteristics of the people. How can the "metaphysical"
"poeric" snobs po::.sibly believe that intellectual solitude is the
ideal medium for artistic creation? Is it nOllrue that in the past
the greatest artistic creations .....ere produced on a great social
scale, by the emotional and rational interaction of politically
homogenous doctrines? The aesthetes of today who say that an
muSt be used for social and proselytising ends if it is to be free,
are guilty of gross sophism. The an of the past was obliged to
reflect the doctrine of the State, and in politically backward and
primitive states, these doctrines did not always guarantee the
artistS a total freedom of expression. But could anyone toda),.
except a fool or a liar, claim that modern an is free simply
because artists are not forced to paint subjects imposed on them
by the political ideology of their economic masters, when the
anist is limited to painting for the domestic use of a small
minority ofsociety and must pander to theircbic, epicurean and
infantile taste?
In Ihis discussion on me relationship between yourself as an
indivic.:Udl and our collective movement, it is obvious but
pdradoxical that you are not exclusively the author of the
contributions I have mentioned. This has been said before but it
must be emphasised. You produced your work b), means ofyour
creative faculties OUt of our colleaive discussions, from
everything we did collectively, in what was evidently a process of
political education; it was unquestionably the result of our
corporate activity, which was then just beginning, the result of
our Mexican Syndicate of Revolutionary Painters, Sculptors
and Engravers and of the ideological progress of everyone who
lOok part in the Mexican revolution. It is unimportant, as I said
t l
s
Jose Clemente Orozco 63
before, that you did not playa direCl pan in the activity of the
Syndicate. perhaps you played no pan at all, but nevertheless
you were inevitably the recipient of everything the Syndi-
cate contributed to the critical, technical and intellectual
environment in which you found yourself. Furthennore. had
you been able to participate in our daily activity, your innate
potential would have been further enriched and your
iconoclastic lendencies would have been checked . . . and
perhaps mis would !lave stopped you becoming such an egoUsL
And all the other reasons? They all hang togeLher and I shall
deal with them as one. which covers tbewhole ofyour laler ideas
and activities.
It was inevitable, both for reasons of our own and for
national, political reasons, which are outside the scope of this
article---but which correspond to one of those critical periods
inherent lO all social change--that our Syndicate should split up
and its members separate. And this is the cause ofthe crisis from
which our movement still suffers; the cause of its gradual loss of
collective social significance and the gradual return of us all, to a
greater or lesser degree, to dOCtrines and practices completel)'
contrary to our Original ideas; mural painting and mass-
reproduction have been progressively displaced by easel
painting, the social function of which is limited to the interior
decoration of the homes of the oligarchic elite. This was the
origin in Mexico of all the pseudo-modern absurdities which
mask the real decadence ofcontemporary plastic artS allover the
world. The natural consequence of your increasing isolation
(that "isolationwithoUl loneliness which is Orolco's" which Luis
Cordoba y Aragon considered a vinue), the loss of ideological
support which you had found in the doctrines of Dr. At! during
your populist period; the loss of the ideological support which
had sustained you through the period of )'our anti-clerical
drawings and your revolutionary combatant period: the toss of
the ideological support which we all gave each other during
the first muralist period, and also during the period when we
edited El Machete. The normal logical beginning of your
surrender to a concept which, if you examine it closely, you will
see belongs to the snobbish doctrines of the so-called Modern
64 Art and Revolution
1 Jose Clemente Orozco
School of Paris . . . although you have added a few
philosophical~soundjng ideas of your own, which come from
your previous liberal period. Your opinion of "the lnah at all
casu" belongs to these ideas. ("Never mind the mistakes or !.he
exaggerations. The important thing is to be able [0 think aloud,
to say what one feels at that very momem, etc., etc.... as you said
in your letter [oJustino Fernandez the an critic.) But is it really
me absolute {rum, to unleash all your biuer scepticism against
the relativity of democracy as a political doctrine, without also
referring (0 me hypocritical attitude of democracy's .....orst
enemies, who emphasise the limitations of the democracies and
speak in favour of anti-popular, ultra-dictatoria.l regimes? No!
It is impossible to respect as absalute truth your sarcasms
against social progressive renegades unless at the same time you
also attack those who first seduced them and then hypocritically
condemned them. You must state the whole truth without
forgetting the worst things-you must speak out against social
and personal deeds which repel you; but you must transform
the partial truths you speak today into whole truths, and whcn
you do that both I and many others who admire your work will
be the first to support you. Unless you do this your ideological
expression will lose its dariey--because you are still an artist
who uses his an to transmit ideas, concepts and judge-
ments--and your work will continue to be interpreted in !.he
most incredible and contrary ways, which may be miles a....'3.y
from your real intention "for confusion is the best servant of
both Moors and Christians". I can give you a few concrete
examples of this. Justina Fernandez, in his articlejost' Clnnnue
Orow, his art and ideaJ, considers you a humanistic philosopher
with a tendency to mystic Christianity, while Luis Cardoza y
Aragon in his book The Cwud and the CkJdr. says that in your work
"there is no philosophy, no dialectic, no narration" ... and that
you "have the honour to be always inexplicable". Can you, a
vigorous, political painter feel flattered by these opinions? Does
it do you any good to be called "the metaphysical poet of the
arts"? Does it do our movement any good? By saying all this, I
am not implying that there is no pOSitive value in this later work
of yours; your work still has a revolutionary though one-sided
.
65
essence. Neither am I saying that the intrinsic artistic value of
your work has diminished. You were the only fresco painter who
realised tbat primitive, age-old techniques were not adequate to
the dynamics of your third period and so dared to try other
methods; you experimented with lime, you combined fresco
with tempera. Were you successful in your attempt to improve
on ancient methods? I don't think you were, because a new
society needs a totally new technique, the material technique
which is furnished by its industry; but neverthdess you were the
only one of the muralists who became dissatisfied with the
eStablished procedure-and in such a siwation, dissatisfaction
opens the way to progress. You were also the only one who
promoted the importance of the mural as an integral pan of
architectonic space and not as the Rat, static pand which was
typical of our first period. I also appreciate the monumental
scale of your contributions to our work, while others cooked in
the private kitchen of Art for Art's Sake. I believe that you have
improved both technically and artistically, but t also believe
that your social involvement should keep pace with these
improvements.
You ask me to sum up my thoughts regarding the historical
importance of your ideas and art in the context of our modem
social art movement.
My answer would be as follows.
Your ideas and your work represent the iconoclastic, de-
mythifying and therefore lyrical period of our work, with all
your extraordinary innate potential-an an potential which is
unrivalled in the comemporary world. You express with almost
mathematical exactitude the ideological mistakes ofmany ofthe
important politicians of our revolutionary movement. Your
exuberant faith at the beginning was like theirs. Your extreme
Jacobinism also. Your first doubts were the same as theirs and
finally your tremendous scepticism and anguished return to a
mystical past is also similar to theirs. Your attitude smacks of a
weak romanticism which would judge the frailties of men as
misdemeanours of the movement they belong to.
Your illness is either curable or incurable--and I believe you
can be cured. When the hopes of the people again grow strong,
66 Art and Revolution Jose Clemente Orozco 67
this may inspire your enormous strength as a painter. I certainly and which is today in grave though not insoluble crisis will fail
do not think you are finished. You are perhaps the youngest of eith~r partially 01- totally, as other movements, such as ~hat frOl~
all those who today suffer an intellectual crisis. Perhaps one of DaVId to Ingres, and from Cezanne to Picasso, have done, and at
the very few of what has been called the first generation-and the same time will lose its imernational belligerence.
there will be even fewer of the second-who can retrace their
steps, no matter how far they have travelled in the direction of
Gide and Breton. If you are unable to do this, you will be caught
up in the vicious circle in which the artistS of the "modern Paris
trends" have found themselves for the last few years. There is no
historical future in these rrends; when the war ends. these
artists will either have to take the way of new humanism, new
classicism, a new neo-realist humanism, or they will have to stay
where they are.
OUf first task is to pUl an end to crisis in Mexican artS. What
can we do?
• Our collectivism was fOrIDer-ly on an infantile. immalUI-e
scale; now we must become authentically collective_
• Previously we made no precise fonnulation of our
doctrines, now we must gradually develop a collective
imellectual programme. which will fundamentally regulate our
work. There has never been an impoT[antschool ofaT[ without a
doctrine.
• Previously our technique and use of materials was
unavoidably primitive and archaic. now we must use a rrul)·
modern technique in accordance with modern technical
progress.
• Although our previous production was social and public it
only reached a limited audience and was disturbed by remnants
of aestheticism and commercialism, our production must now
expand and become a national functional expression, thus
acquiring more universal aesthetic values.
• Formerly our subject matter was diffuse and infantile, later
it became contaminated by the type of evasion called "art for
art's sake" and became abstruse and sceptical; LOday it must
become increasingly more concise, clearer and polemically
more poweliu!.
Unless we do this, our movemem, which made the first
attempt to overcome the prevalem decadence of Western art,

11
At!. the Political and Theoretical
Precursor
(From lhe book Ours is the Only WBY. the nlltiontlJ end intemllrioruJl
Importence of modfNn Melfican painting. The firsr mBnffllstBfion of
serious miSfit reform in the conremponJ'Y world. Wrinen by David
Alfaro SiQueiro6 and poblish&d by himself in Mexico, 1945)
Dr. Ad was famous for his vitality. His political and scientific
aClivities have been talked about for years. But very few realise
,he historical imparlance of his role in the development of
modem Mexican painting.
This ignorance is due to me fact that even less is known at
home than abroad aboullheexacl nature and importance afme
social aesthetic movement which gave binh to our painting; and
in we same ....'<iy. no one understands we
causes of the present
crisis which is not irremediable.
My objeCt in writing this is therefore to give a briefaccount of
the brilliant comribution this great fighter made to our art
movement.
He gave us our first idea, our first enthusiasm for mural
painting; me idea of a return to public an, to a new classicism.
to civil art in a world where an was being produced for private
domestic pleasure. with all the fatal consequences this can have
on the intrinsic value of a work of art and its social range and
accessibility. h is common knowledge that Dr. Atl was
cmhusiaHic about 'Wall painting from the very beginning of the
century (Orozco and others say it was even earlier). It is
unimportant historically that his was a purely lyrical position; it
At!. the Precursor 69
was the type of romanticism nonnal to all precursors, in every
sphere ofhuman activity. Only dmecould produce the technical
maturity of Diego Rivera and the others.
• It is to Dr. At! that we owe the second official revolutionary
attack on the pseudo-academic teaching of the old school of
San Carlos, now the school of Fine Arts. The first attack was
carried out by the scudents wim their strike in 191 J, when they
received such intelhgent suppon from their teacher Alfredo
Ramos Martinez. It is nO[ very important that this activity was
mainly desuuctive and devoid of integral solutions, because at
the time the important objective was the destruction of the old
system which had ruined so many generationr-a mentaJ
structure which denied the powerful sources of Mexican
tradition-so that the way could be prepared for a new
progressive system of art teaching. Had the first movement not
been so nihilistje it would have been difficult later to establish
the present doctrine of new classicism which believes {hat any
teaching system which fails to produce a socially functional art is
intellectuaJ suicide for the teacher and imelleClual murder for
the student.
• We owe to him the nrstdirect political militancy ofMex..ican
artists in the ranks of Lhe revolution, where we refound our
national culcure; we owe to bim the beginning of the end
of the apolitical, bohemian, parasitic artist, the typical
Montpamassian, the intellectual snob of today, and to him is
due the birth of the citizen artist in the widest sense of the tenD,
comparable to the best anists of the best periods ofart history. It
is evident that his participation in organising the workers of the
capital into the Red Battalions .....-as an incentive to the 01.-
studenll; of the School of Fine Arts and the striking students of
the school, to pa.·ticipate in the political and military life of
modem Mexico--without this the Mexican art movement
would have been theoretically impossible. In assessing the value
of these historical facts, it is nOt important {hat what was done
was done more in a spirit of adventure than of a solidly based
political conviction. Without this definite public position,
Mexican artists today would perhaps not be able LO appreciate
thar only an artist who is integrated into society and its progress
70 Art and Revolution
can create important works of an, becaus~ these w.or~s can only
reRect his own relationship to the real society of his time.
• We owe to him the first, most categorical and publicly
expressed admif3tion for Mexican popular art, which had
obviously been underestimated and frequemly despised by the
francophile intellectuals of the pre-revolutionary oligarchy;
and he was responsible for the state's first attempts to ro~em
and protect this art. ALI was the predecessor ofall later admirers
and state supporters of the popular an which emc~ed
simultaneously wilh the political transformation of MeXICO.
Any archaeological elTors he may have made ar~ hisu:~ri~lly
unimportant, because they may have been due to hiS admuatlon
for the surprising fonns of pre-Hispanic tradition; he made us
understand the need to incorporate this collective art form in a
way which was commensurate with the political and social
conditions of the present. It does nO[ detract from the value of
his admiration for the people's capacity for creating beauty, that
he did not investigate it more deeply. He laid the foundations
for the idea that when a people maintains its latent ability to
produce popular art-3.S precarious as its economic life is
precarious-it is in a condition to reb~ild at a ~av~urable
sociological moment a monumental, herOIC, humanuanan a~,
of use to the state and the nation; this is how a people keeps llS
national heritage alive.
• We owe to him Mexico's first dissatisfaction with traditional
materials: he was the first person, in a world which was fatally
immersed in a mystical, regressive love for ancestral, archaic
methods, to search for a modern physical medium. Once again
it is relatively unimportant that his solutions were only partial
and that he was unable to foresee the importance of the
tremendous chemical and mechanical discoveries of the
contemporary world. Nevertheless. it w~s ~ndoubtedly he ,,:h~
sowed the seeds of the immutable pnnclple that an artist s
material and lools detennine the characler of his work. whereas
the academicians and the intellectual pseudo academic and
pseudo-classical snobs of Europe believe it is determined by the
artist's sensualitY.
• He was the 'first person in Mexico to express his break wilh
AtI, the Precursor 71
the academic routine of composition and perspective In a
society in which artists were limited by the "chic" domestic
nature of art which pre'\'emed them from discovering the
dynamic solutions to be found in contemporary scientific
progress. It is again unimportant that he merely substituted
curvilinear perspective for rccrilinear perspective. His practical
application of the method, which was in any case superior,
showed us that the spectatOr was neither a fixed sta.tue, nor one
on a revolving axis; today we can see that the spectator is a
human being in movement. with an infinite number ofviewing
points available to him each of which produces its own infinite
distortion of the visual plane.
• We owe to him-in his own work. of course--a systematic
and permanent withdrawal from gallery art and primitivism,
from the retrograde art characteristically found all over the
world in the production of both academicians and so called
modern artistS. It is relatively unimportant thai his modernity
has not yet attained a higher level because in order to do 50 it is
necessary to draw on more modern emotional sources-the new
emotional sources created by man's contact with contemporary
mechanics-and the more up to date direct use of modem
materials and tooLs. It is evident that anti-archaic theories must
go hand in hand with similar decisions regarding the material,
physical production of art.
.. We owe to him an unquestionable persistence in the spirit
of monumentality, in the rejection of everything domestic and
thus lacking in a lyrical quality, in a world where the general
taste for art has been conditioned to domestiot)'. It is
unimportant to the chronological importance of this fact that
his desire for monumental art was unable to break the formal
limitations of easel painting-destined exclusively for the
elegant private home-nor the anti·sociallimilations of a work
of art which has not been conceived in terms of mass reproduc·
tion-and therefore maximum popular circulation-through
the extraordinal)' facilities of modern mechanics; in other
words, he did not touch the new vehicle-; of monumentality.
In any case, his constant suPPOrt for the heroic, truly pro-
fessional work of art, at a time when dileltantism was at its
72 Arc and Revolution
apolhwsis is an ou(Standing example to the artiSlS of our
country and all over the world .
• We owe [0 him the important contribution of his
cosmogenic. panoramic (if the term is applicable) sense of
landscape which is a direct consequence of the new poetical
angle supplied by the airplane, in this world of,'academics" and
"moderns" who. immobilised, stare with monocular vision at
the small scrap of land they can see through me window; at the
little bit of countryside, with a group of trees, a cow, or perhaps
a little cowshed. Dr. Au showed us the way to a truly modern,
poetic artistic view of the universe.
• To sum up, our most important debt to him is his eternal
youthfulness, his invariable audacity, when faced with the
reaClionary audacity of the world today, with its veneration of
archaic art fOnTIs, disguised as. creative invention, as the "most
important formal revolution of aU time," It is a pity that during
recent, lamentable occasions of pro-fascist madness, he has
been reduced to limiting himself to paiming pictures and
has bad to forgo the other essential aspects of a totally revolu-
tionary anist.
These are attitudes and experiences of Me \llhich those under
forty, the young artists of Mexico and other countries, owe to
mis man ofover sixty. Attitudes and experiences which all of us
would do well to examine closely and evaluate historically, so
that we may make authemic improvements and re-encounter
our social platform, from which Mexican modem painting
derived its strength and its international prestige.
12
Rivera. the First Practical
Exponent of our Art
{From the book OUfsl, thfl O,,1y WilY. Mell;co, 19451
In a previous article, Modtm Mexican painting; tM }iT!.l
appe~ranu cif.pro/0und reform in contemporary arl, I said that modern
MeXican palntmg was "the first objective manifestation in the
E.resem era of a new public an, a new and greater State art".
I shaJl now perfonn an act ofch:onological justice, by talking
about thefint tmp(Jrtaru ~n among it!.foundm: Diego Rivera. But
before I sta,:!, I must remmd my readers mat J have had, and still
h~ve, ~y dlffere~ces with Rivera regarding technique and the
hlSlonca.l appreciation of our movement. However I do nOl
think this article is the place to refer to our wel1-kno~and very
~eat political dif!"~ence!i. of the past. I can assure you that these
dl!"ere~ces of opinion wllI not mue the slightest difference to
Ul1~ ~t1c1e, ~h1Ch will only pmmt obJectiv~ opinion.s-objective
opmlons which I believe are indispensable for the future health
ofour movement, which is my main concern.
Dur~ng i~ first .years our movement was publicly identified
only ~Ith Diego Rivera. Mexican painting was Diego Rivera and
nothmg more. Later on, two other names became associated
with his, those of Jose Clemente Orozco and my own. This
occurred with the publication of Ana Brenner's book Idolj
Bthind Allar!. (Payson &; Clarke Inc" New York, 19~9)' This book,
a~though infa~tile and anecdOlal, is perhaps the only true
history yet written about the resurgence of modern Mexican
painting. At a later date, the presence in Mexico of Serge
74 Art and Revolution
Eisenstein, Hart Crane, EugeneJolas, William Sprading. Eyler
Simpson, Gabriel Garcia MarOlo, Waldo Frank, Elie Faure and
many other European intelleCluals, gave Mexican painting the
stature of a movement, of a Jchool rif painting, "The Mexican
School of Painting", me "Mexican Renaissance", and the
names of many other artiSLS received deserving mention, among
them: Dr. Ad, Roberto Montenegro, Ramon Alva de 1a Canal,
Fermin Revueltas,Jean Charlot, Carlos Merida, Fernando LeaJ.
Rodriguez Lozano, Xavier Guerrero. etc., all important
participants in this firSt period.
Afterwards the names of the "second generation" of anisl$,
Rufino Tamayo, Julio Castellanos, Leopolda Mendez, Carlos
Orozco Romero, Pablo O'Higgins, Maria Izquierdo, Alfredo
lalea, Antonio Ruiz, Frida KaWa, Augustin Lazo. etc.; and
finally me names of a "third generation" of artists began to be
mentioned by the aitics, Guerrero Galvan. Juan O'Gorman,
Jose Chavez Morado. Antonio Pujol, Raul Anguiano, Luis
Arenal, Juan Soriano, Guillermo Meza, etc., and also artists
~en younger than these. Mexican painti.ng gained credit as a
national movement, then as a continental movement, and
finally as an exemplary expression of international art. It thus
became a competitor, in intelleuual opposition to the modern
trend of Paris. There was talk of two roads: the objective road of
modtm ideological art, of modem social an. of a new public an,
the Mexican movement, and the TOad ofm,?jective art ("from the
surface of the canvas outwards into space"), of a modern art
limited to aesthetics. the intellectual focus of which was the
group of international artists work.ing in Paris. It was thus
accepted that there was a difference between their jociet) art and
our jociai art.
Intellectual competition leads to commercial competition.
Mexican modern painting became the natural rival of French
modem painting on the U.S.A. market. This commercial rivalry
was relatively small before the war, but when the Parismarchandj
found their traditional European markets dosed to them, the
competition grew much fiercer.
Commercial rivalry, whatever its scale, brings with it a
theoretical discussion as to the intrinsic values of the objects
Rivera 75
involved. The modern art marchandj of Paris found it necessary
to destroy the prestige of their competitors, the modem
Mexican paimers. What tactic could be better than to deny the
international value of the Mexican movement and give it the
Status of a mere branch of the great cultural creativity of the
Modem School of Paris? The best way to do this was to attack
the beSt known Mexican paimer, Diego Rivera. This is what the
Rosenbergs of the Paris market have done. with the conscious or
unconscious aid of those francophile art critics, both Mexican
and foreign, who function in the intellectual commercial circles
of our country. and with the aid also of those Mexican painters,
particularly those of the third generation who have forgonen
the theory and most of the tradition of modern Mexican
painting and have been yielding to the temptation of the "pure
artists", who offer them what they think of as permanent
economic securil)', without understanding that we are all "in the
same boat"; furthermore, they are supported in this position by
the extreme commercial blindness of the very people intere<;ted
in "the business of Mexican painting".
It is therefore vital to 6ght against these competitors, who
have so far had it all their own way. We can be sure ofour victory
in this battle, because we are sure that our road is the right one;
we can be sure that our involvement with the problems of man
and society and the technical problems of our times will lead us
to the "nnu cla.uiri.Jm" which the others seek but have not been
able to find because of their decadent snobbism and lack of
ideological objective. This is our objective, as it is of the real
pro~c1assicist movement based on Cezanne.
My first step in achieving this will be to defend our most
famous painter, our most polific painter, and in so doing I shall
concentrate on the positive aspects of his work.
Diego Rivera foresaw, in 1919 before any of the other Mexican
painters living in Europe at that time. the nature and
importance of the intellectual transformation which th~
Mexican revolution would cause in Mexico. He was the first
Mexjcan painter living abroad to ally himself with the aims and
ideas of the Mexican youth who had partir:f- .. ted in the armed
76 Art and Revolution
struggle. Angel larraga, the other "famous" Mexican paimer
who was living in Pa.ris during OUf civil war, was unable to free
himself of his pseudo-arislOcraetic and academic ideas.
However, at a later date, Roberto Montenegro and Ramos
Martinez did !.his.
Diego Rivera was me only Mexican painter residing in
Europe in t92~ who found himself intellectually and morally
able to transmit to lIle young Mexican left the principles of
cezanne: "to restore to the ptastic arl.S the tundamental values
which disappeared after the Renaissance"; he was the only
person capable of cransmitting to them the anti·academic
~ebellion of the pre-cubist period, and the pro-classicist
InteresLS. of the new, post-cubist .figurativism--the only person
who pOinted OUt the degenerauve dangers which could arise
from commercial snobbery. Without the intellectual aid of
Diego Rivera I would have been unable to formulate my "Call
to the arlislS of America", publisht"d in 19i'1 in the magazine
Vida Amnitana in Barcelona, which Ana Brenner and other
historians of Mexican modem an considered the "first
theoretical formulation" of our movement.
In Igu Diego Rivera, with his cultural background and his
already evident professional maturity, made Mexican mural
painting possible, and everything of value in the Mexican art
movement today is foundt"d historically on this basis. Without
Rivera's enthusiasm for public, heroic, Byzantine and Etruscan
an, ouc muralist movement might have had to wait until the rest
of us had acquired greater matucity and the theoretical
knowledge we then lacked. His neo-primitivism, his
ethnography, his archaeology, his interest in folk art, were not
only inevitable, they were necessary at that time; that he has still
remai~ed in such a primitive phase is quite another thing.
Durmg the course of our first mural period (lg22-4) Diego
Rive.r~ gave us the practical sense of our valuable pre-Hispanic
traditions, of the values of colonial mysticism, of the varied
natur.e of Mexican popUlar an; he showed us how to apply in
pracuce all those things which, at the time of our Barcelona
arpeal, were only a theory of how to find univenaliry through
dIrect contact with the valuable traditions of our own country.
Rivera 77
During the healthy period of our muraJism, which coincided
with the period during which he mainly worked in a collective
group, Diego Rivera insisted in demonstrating, with more
fervour than any of us, bath theoretically and practically, the
vital need to be good craftsmen. He gave us the theoreticaJ
principles and practical experiments which would enable those
of us who were "not so old" to fight against the routine teaching
of the academics, and the aUlo-didacticism of the pseudo-
moderns, against the idealisation of "ingenuity" and the
dileuantism which the snobs of the Modem School of Paris
found so gratifying; he made possible our present ideas about
modern professionalism in modern art, in the broadest sense of
the term.
At the same time, because Diego Rivera had more pro-
fessional experience and more theoretical knowledge, he was
the first to pass from the aesthetic mysticism of our very fiTSt
murals (in the National Preparatory School) to an doquently
ideological objective which was essential if our art was to be
commiut"d to the problems of mank.ind and society; his initial
theory and practice established the pattern which enabled us [Q
improve on them.
Diego Rivera, who extended our mural movement abroad at
a slightly later date than Orozco, showed that our movement
had international value and was not merely a native form of
expression with a purely local function; he showed that,
although our economy was still semi4colonial, our movement
had universal vaJues even for the economic capitals of the
world; he demonstratt"d that an impulse which derives from a
national urge to rebel, can destroy imperialist oppression of
cultural creativity.
Diego Rivera remained faithful to mural painting throughout
a period in which easel painting enjoyed great success in
Mexico, owing to me developmenc of the tourist trade, from
which he, with his great preslige, could have profited very
greatly, as did Orozco. He kept his faith and confidence in our
new Mexican school, born in the heat of the Mexican
revolution, and he also kept faith wilh the fundamental art
forms of all great periods of history-the forms of public art.
78 Art and Revolution
And finally, Diego Rivera is vital enough to accept, as he
already has done, fundamentally, by accepting the programme
of the emtrt for Modem RtalUtk Art, that Ollr movement muS[
now study the problems ofproceeding to a JtcQnd 5lage which will
take into account the science and technology of our lime. He
understands in lheory that an forms which disappeared four
hundred years ago and have been resurrected cannot, in
themselves and unchanged, become !.he definitive style of our
movement. In theory he understands that technique cannOl
remain stalic and that therefore each successive generadon of
Mexican painters brings new energies and vigour to the
~olution of our modem social an.
To sum up: it is impossible (0 undersrand the full magnitude
of Rivera's work. unless we undersLUld that mural painting is
fundamental to it, and that his easel painting is only
complementary. TheworkofDiego Rivera, together with that of
Orozco, must therefore be considered as the first expressions of
public art after a long period of world decadence. He was the
first painter to produce a work of art which was important in the
development of public art, although it had all the negative and
positive elements of the period in which it was produced. This
was the period of transition, the intellectual and technical
bridge between the "Momparnassian" art of the "modern
trends" of Paris, between me art of cezanne and our new
collective drive towards a social art which would be valid for the
present and future of every country.
13
The Function of the Photograph
(Articlll published by David Alfaro Slquelrolln No. 44 1 of the magazine
Hoy. Mexico D. F.. August 4th, 1945)
There is nothing more "comfortable" in an criticism, as in all
other types of criticism, than the literary method. This is the
method which most critics have used in discussing the work of
Manuel Alvarel Bravo, on show at the Modern Arts Society.
When the critics refer to his "photo-poetry" they are merely
writing "photo-literature". Their criticism is doubtless very
fine, like that of the aging bohemian, affected Surrealist poetS of
Paris, btl( because it is one-sided, and only "artistic", it is of no
use, or even frankly hannful, to the somnolent artistic
intellectuals of Mexico, who are still arguing as to whether
photography is OT is nOf-yes, in the abstract---one of the fine
arts. In Europe and the States it has already become obvious
that, in general tenns, the muhankal proCtdurt oj ph.otograph} can
produce art..
I shall therefore try to use a diffe.rent, less poetic method in
discussing photography. Although I know that this subject will
have to be developed much further, I shall try to be less poetic
and more objective.
In view of its origins and histOrical development, what is the
function of photography?
This question can perhaps be answered more dearly by
means of other questions which have already been answered.
Who developed this system of preserv ing images wh ich we call
photography? It was mostly developed by painters or people
with an interest in art and artislic lecbniques, from the days of
pre· Christian Greece.
80 Art and Revolution
True development started at the time of the Renaissance and
it was actually discovered in the nineteenth cemury.
Why should painters have wanted to invent the photograph?
Because they were professionally interested in reproducing
Images.
At first their interest was empirical bur later it became
scientific.
They were not merely trying (0 compare the images they
produced themselves with those of the camera.
There is no question but that they were insrinctively looking
for a vehicle, either accessory or direct, which would lead to a
more integral, truer, more realistic realism, since realism has
always been and will continue to be the basic desideratum of
artists at all but the decadent periods of history.
Even the "dandy" surrealism of the decadent international
snobs in Paris searched for absolute realism, although of course
their aesthetic angle was quite different.
Logically, the painters who imagined and developed the
photograph did not suspect that their brain-child would be
primitive and colourless. They were hoping to capture a·true
image in colours. Modern technique has already been able to
produce this and it will soon be widely available. When that
happens, their documentary tOol will amply have fulfilled its
original purpose.
How then can we explain that photography serves science,
technology, everything, but not the plastic arts which brought it
imo being?
This is the most astounding part of the story; the most
incredible paradox. Photography has not, in fact, fulfil1ed the
objective for which it was historically designed; and while it has
made technical progress the heirs of its creators have fallen into
decadence.
All branches of physical science (astrophysics to a surprising
degree), chemistry, medicine (through radiography and other
more recent techniques), cartography (and thus geography),
teaching, miJital}' science and art, etc., all owe more to
photography man to any other of their scientific tools.
As we should all know, photography can provide docu-
The Function of the Photograph 81
menrary proof of what was previously a hypothesis, and in
providing proof it has been the most valuable instrument of
progress in every branch of science and technology.
Photography has made jdentific proof unquestionably real.
Propaganda, publicity and spon also owe it a debt.
What should the attitude of painters and artists be to this
vehicle which their predecessors conceived and which has been
so highly perfected and developed?
I must repeat, the idea of those who first conceived the notion
of the photograph and perfected the camera obscura, was to fix
the image of man and the things about them as a document in
their search for greater realism.
Artists of the great periods, of the progressive periods which
had not yet developed the sophistical concept that the value of
\ art was absolute throughout history, were interested in finding
out the mechanism by which we perceive things through an
interplay of light and shade; they were trying to work out the
principles of spatial depth and correct the errors ofperspective;
they were trying to work out the movement of spatial volumes
(they wanted to know how a horse runs, how an explosion
occurs, the rhythm of man, etc.), they wanted to discover the
principle behind the expressions through which man expresses
I, his sentiments (they wanted to see, not just to remember, how a
man looks when he is crying, frightened, happy et/;;:.); they
wanted to discover the way in which architectural surfaces
were penoanently active in tenos of man's physical and
"metaphysical" mobility; they wanted to discover the principle
behind artistic dialectics; in the last resort, what they wanted was
to discover a basis from which they could analyse rationally all
the sdentific elements which are to be found in a work of
creative art, and leave behind them the purely emotional, ulna.-
primitive basis on which they had hitherto functioned.
r or course they could not foresee that their invention would
overtake them and wouJd provide them with realistic elements
which they had not previously imagined.
They could never have thought that the first photographs, the
daguerrotypes, would imitate the painting of their time. Far less
could they have imagined that modern photography, in its
82 Art and Revolution The Function of the Photograph 83
ultra-perfection, with its immensely valuable ability to capture and plastic arlo All the tools used to produce an are machines,
objective images would be inspired by the fundamcncally even the most primitive.
subjective snob art of today. • If art is to be carried out on the material, public, democratic
Photography could in fact be the technical expression of the scale which is required in today's world, then we muSt be able to
essence of each historical period, so mat painting could be mass-reproduce it.
successively modernised, truly modernised and weaned for
example from the pre-Raphaelitism which has set the formal
aesthetic pattern for artistic production in the modem world.
including Mexico; it could serve [0 connect !.he plastic arlS with
new intereSlS, which were also objects of interest [0 the Baroque
paimers with their .search for movemem and physical and
psychological action, which was the last word in the formal
progress from the schematic an of remotest antiquity through
the !.haught-provoking spatial an of the Middle Ages, and the
chiaroscuro of space and volume.
But the inventors of photography may also have thought of
somelhing else: that this new vehicle for preserving images,
might also be able to createao art of its own, a photographicarl.
And if they could s~ what has become ofphotography, perhaps
it would satisfy them more than any olher development in the
art field.
This is oolrone aspea of the funnion of photography, but it
is a very important aspect which requires a thorough analysis;
and Manuel Alvar~ Bravo's exhibition provides an excellent
opportuni.ty to do so.
Before finishing this article, 1 would like to make dear what I
believe to be the integral function of the pholOgraph today.
The function of the photograph is:
• To serve, in a documtnlary sense, as an objective and
psychological collaborator which can "check" the plaSlic
process of both painting and all other art.
• To serve, in a docummJ.ary role, science and technology.
• To serve, in a documentary role, teaching, propaganda and
publicity.
• Photographers, specialised or othelwise, can
simultaneously comribute their own particular aesthetic
expression, their aesthetic, photographic product. We are
talking about a machine? Only a machine can create graphics

14
National Cinema: Trueor False?
lArticle published in the magazine Asi, Meltico D. F., September 151h,
1945)
In this article I shall answer the fourteenth question of the
cwemy-five in me questionnaire which I published in the last
number of Ali.
Can the financiers, ~pr-wri[ers, directors, stars and extras,
technicians, etc., really be proud of the economically
precarious, painfully provincial imitations of vacuous, multi-
millionaire Hollywood productions which are being produced
in MO(ico ladar? Can the Mexican people be proud of them?
Have we improved on those very old films "Storm over
Mexico" and "Nets", or has our national cinema become more
and mOTC anaemically picturesque, noveleuish and musical
comedy.like? In spite of its technical progress, it is culturally
harmful both politically and aesthetically to Mexicans and all
other South Americans.
In view of the fact that the cinema is the best medium for
educating the masses, would it not be worth the Govemmem's
while [Q control or nationalise our cinema industry, as
Czechoslovakia has already done, and most other European
countries are bound to do in order to avoid the mediocrity
which must inevitably result from the mercenary box-office
mentality of private film producers?
In answering my previous question, I shall take the problem
as a whole and will not refer to particular aspects or minor
exceptions. In [his way J hope to avoid errors in the appreciation
National Cinema, True or False? 85
of details and injustice in referring to isolated actors and
productions.
The beginning! of Mexkan cinema
Modem Mexican painting and cinema appeared
simultaneously. They are both, to a certain extent, a namral
consequence of the Mexican revolution: a consequence of the
cultural upheaval which the revolution caused.
It is no accident that in the Barcelona magazine VidaAmnicana
hg2 d, the Mexican imdlectuals who had emerged from the
Revolution simultaneously published a manifesto to "The
Artists of America", which was considered to be the first
theoretical formulation of the future modem art movement in
Mexico, and also an article on "The beginnings of Mexican
cinema". This was the first step in the orientation ofMexican an
towards social juntlionalit,.
Mexican cinema and Mexican painting "were born" of a
strong nationalistic feeling, like all powerful art movements
which are destined to play an important role in th~ world of an.
In our country's political struggle, we of the art and cinema
world acquired real knowledge of the men, geography,
archaeology and general traditions of Mexico. We began to
discover and understand the vitally urgent problems of our
national identity.
At first, of course, we were very unsure of ourselves. The first
films, with their primitive technique, were the exaa equivalent
of aUf first murals and political printS. In their essentiaJ
aesthetic honesty they could be compared to altar pieces and
anonymous popular songs. Infantile voices, full of social
vigour, urging on the fighting masses. There is a peasant
proverb which says: "You learn to speak by speaking", and this
was fundamentally what we were doing. When we achieved
maturity, we would serve a cause, the cause of our people and
Our nation, and not exist merely for the amusement ofsnobbish
elites or masses sickened by superficiality. This was our original
programme, our elemental doctrine.
But then what happened?
86 Art and Revolution
First supportJrom abroad
Later, the young Mexican cinema industry received valuable
help from abroad (we painters would have given a great deal to
have been able to receive help like this).
The extTaordinary malenal which later went to make "Swnn
over Moc.ico" (although unavoidably adulterated by
Hollywood) was filmed in Mexico. The srylistic and thematic
basis of Mexican cinema had its origins in this material. I!
seemed a healthy antithesis to the poison which Hollywood
g~nerally tum~ QUI and it already hinted at the dynamic
cmematographlc an of Mexico, of the intrinsic and immediate
problems of the M~ican. at the geography. archaeology and
popular an of MexiCO and its heroic history. Monumemal and
th~e~ore public material, it was comparable (0 OUT own mural
palntmg. A materiaL in which the people were the actors. Neo-
realist and neo-humanist, it was ofimmense importance for tl.~
mass aesthetic production of the future. Ofcourse, it had all the
defects one would expect from its foreign directors; it was
decorative, "artistic", and to a certain extent made for the
tourist; these defects were also typical of its time, and certainly
not .d.one on purpose. It was the product of all me negative and
positive elements of Serge Eisenstein and his technical
collabora~or~. Mexican cinema and our modern, social painting
were conunumg to develop on parallel lines.
Firstfruit; ofour apprrotiwhip
Then came "Nets". ~ "primitive" masterpiece at the first try,
and ?Ot ma~e by f~relgners alone. Several Mexicans played a
creatlve part 10 the direCtion of this film. As in the case of ''Storm
ove: Mexico", it differed from the "Hollywood School", The
subject was more human and social. It conformed [0 a more
acrive concept of cinema, rather [han theatre, and therefore was
l'~lOre dyn.amic than the static type of cinema usually seen at thal
time. As 10 the first film, there were mass scenes in which the
people a:ted, and the cinematography was neo-realist, public
and herOIC, The screen play was by Paul Strand, Emilio Gomez
Muriel, Agustin Velazquez Chaves and Silvestre Revue!tas, while
National Cinema, True or False? 87
Julio Bracho also participated. It was a fertile consequence of
what had been learm from the previous film. There was still a
heahhy relationship between the progress of me cinema and
that of painting.
But, did the Mexican cinema fulfil its role as the
expression-and educalOr--{)f the Mexican people in their
historical snuggle?
Intreasing inttT7lationaL pmtige
When "Stonn over Mexico" and "Nets" appeared, they
received, unfonunately, more prestige abroad than they di.d at
home. "Nets" was widely shown in the States and in Buenos
Aires and, as a very imponam cullural event, in nearly aJl the
important capitals of Europe. I was able to see it in one of the
best cinemas in Paris, in 1937. Of course it was not only the
specific value of the film, it was, to a greater extent, due to an
awakening worldwide interest in the new Mexico, in a Mexico
with new political interests which had emerged from the civil
war.
How to exploit these successes? How to profit from this
magnificent debut?
A market appean
The two films we mentioned before prepared the way, and
"Alia en el Rancho Grande" was produced and released_ A
Mexican film wirh a superior material (though not film)
technique, and spoken in Spanish, for countries where the
majority of me population was illiterate. It still had some of the
good qualities of its predecessors: a good popular plot, and a
certain degree ofhonesty, etc. But it also contained a reactionary
nucleus, sufficiently disguised as to be invisible at first sight from
the public. It was successful allover Mexico and Latin America.
This film was no longer a "spearhead" of technical progress,
and was somewhat lacking in merit. It enjoyed the same political
prestige as revolutionary Mexico enjoyed among the great
masses of the oppressed in Latin America, It was the socially
exemplary voice of Mexico, the voice of Mexico which would
guide all those peoples (0 find national independence, the
88 Art and Revolution
ownership of thdr land, work.er reform, reading, culture and
industrial modernisation. The film was not destined solely for
the large elegant cinemas ofSpanisb American capitals, but for
cinemas in the outlying districts and !.he provinces. The poor
applauded while !.he rich suspected and despised it. as they did
everything which did not come ITom me im~rialist capitalist
centres of culture. There was no doubt that a continental
commercial ouLlet had been found for Mexican cinema.
Was adequate use made of this extraordinary opponuniry?
A sttp in the UffOng direction
Our painting and engraving continued along its original,
powerful way, in spite of contamination from the pseudo-
modern trends of Paris and the dreadful stagnation oHarm. To
an extent, art remained the daily collaborator of a politically
progressive state, even during the periods when the state was
merely using demagogic words to hide its ami-revolutionary
programme. It el~oyed a degree of economic prosperity, which
mainly contaminated easel painting which pandered to the taste
of the touri,s.t-
Unfortudately, the cinema industry was quite a different
story. When it conquered the popular South American market,
capital.ist speculators began to show their avarice. Big film
studios we~ built, imponam foreign technicians were brought
in; the physical "tricks" of North American and European
cinema were partially learnt; new ",Titers were paid; new actors
and extras were brought in, and so on. New capital was also
incorporated, and !.he prosperous new industry acquired a
powerful economic backing; but the initial impetus was lost,
and with it the great objective and the embryonic international
value of the first efforts.
The Latin American market was flooded with economic
competition in the shape of films from the U.S.A., Europe and
the Argentine. Mexican cinema became, with rare exceptions,
uncouth, mediocre and anti-revolutionary; it became an art
which directly and shamefully censored the revolutionary
programme which gave it life and sustenance--everyone knows
that the State has provided both direct and indirect financial
National Cinema. True or False? 89
SUPPOTt to the film i~dUstry; it ~ecame.an art fo~ which men:-Iy
transcribed the pLatitudes and polemIC chorus of the enemies
of the new order.
Mocican cinema-with very rare exceptions--became a
source of corruption for those intellectuals who were interested
in writing for it. Imponam writers, some with a revolutionary
background, slowly became more and more enslaved to the
sodal views of me bosses ofthe cinema industry. This happened
at a vital period of Mexican history, I do not ref~ to political
events, but to human affairs of a wider and lasting interest.
Mexican cinema an element of corruption for the actors,
although many of those who work.ed in the cinema were
outstanding. It made non-professional aClors theatrical and
failed to get theatrical actors to adapt to the needs ofthe ci~ema.
Although many tried to resist, ~h~y all beca.me Simple
gesticulators, with the manners and diction ofa mUSical comedy
actor, or at best they were melodramatic. On the whole, drama
became funny, and comedy "dramatic".
Mexican cinema, which began so well, has managed to
become a carbon copy of American technical "tricks" or of the
static, theatrical cinema of Europe. It never seems to copy the
good examples.
Mexican cinema has falsified Mexican life and the Mexican
people. It has turned our horsemen into theatrical tenors or
dolled up cowboys, in a servile rranscription of the "Mexican
gunmen" invented by Hollywood. ?ur peasantS have ~n
"washed",licked dean, and dehumaOlsed because of the stupId
inferiority complexes of our producers. which have also turned.
our "aristocrats", our provincial bourgeois into an anxious,
puerile, unsuccessful copy of the gentlemen of European and
American "High Society". All this is totally alien to the people
and things of Mexico.
And to top all this off, Mexican cinema in its permanent
intellectual servility IOwards the worst elements of European
and American cinema has made the love idyll of the stars, the
focal point of all its plots. lI~stead of making the p~ople act .in
films and letting man play hImself we have been gIven heavdy
made up, dehumanised actors.
90 Art and Revolution
When Mexican cinema tries (Q escape from this pattern, as it
has d.one very exception~lJy on a few recent occasions, it merely
falls Into the most puenle and on occasion ludicrous versions
of the pseudo. surrealist, snobbish affectations of the Paris
tTe?d~; and it does this so timidly that it almost makes you cry.
ThiS IS the natural consequence of a half-heaned rebellion, a
shame·faced insurgence, afraid to offend the taste and pockets
of its financiers.
Mexican cinema has gradually become a mixture of the
Lheat~icality of Hollywood's operettas, the superficiali£)' of the
Spamsh uJn.Utla, the sentimentality of French and Italian
melodrama. the intellectual snobbishness of the supposedly
modem French films and others of the same rype, and of the
pathological degradation of traditional Mexican "burlesque";
its aeSlheLics answer exclusively to me socia-economic mOtor
which drives it and which is 10gicaUy only interested in box-
office returns and in fighLing against its political enemies.
although this involves trafficking in the most dangerous
ideological and intellectual drugs in existence, on a national and
continental scale.
But what its "stupid" financiers-and also its artists and
technicians--do not know, is that eventually this will lead to an
economic catastrophe. Better box office results would accrue in
the long run from fewer but better films, with good technicaJ
and social qualities.
I have trave.lled through most South American countries and I
can assure you that Mexican films are so unpopular with both
ordinary and intellectual audiences, that Argenrinian films,
which are bad enough, are beginning to gain ground.
Is it too late to return to the right road, which would also be
the right commercial road?
Radical changtJ art urgent
The Government must intervene and fight against poverty,
disease, illiteracy and the general lack of culture, and for good
farming, good induSlrial development and a real indus-
trialisation of the country; it must educate the people both
politically and aesthetically to be able (Q rake part in this
Nat;clnal Cinems, True or False? 91
process. The cinema is vital to every facet of pl"ogress in the
Mexican revolution, in Mexican democracy, both here and
abroad.
A Mexican cinema which is colonially and economicaJly
dependent can do no mort than it is doing. It can never become a
powerful cinema, as important as the most important in the
world. wbich is whal both Mexico and Latin America need.
The Mexican government can solve this in one of £wo ways:
they can anempt an emergency solution which would only be
partial, or they could lry the penn anent solution of lotal
transformation.
The GOVtrnmml mwt tXCcUt atsthttic and polilical control over
priva1t ciMmt1 production, through a thorqughiy compeltnL commission
MI upfor thal purpoM.
And whm the lime comeJ, the indwtry must be nalwnalistd bteawt il
rtjlTeJrnls tM Statt'j btU educational wdium. It would be jwt as logical
for tl!t dnmu1 to rtrnain in private lumdJ as it would btjor the MiniJtTJ oj
Education-and all other official enJititJ of education and cultur~o
btcome privalt. Jpuulativt capilalist COrufflU.
Unless this is done, Mexican cinema, the "pride" of its
mercenary propagandists, the "pride" of its bought critics, and
toda)' in economic trouble, will continue to be justa big bone of
comention for everyone, including its own trade union workers.
•

15
The Creed of David Alfaro
Siqueiros
(Published in the catalogue to "45 Self-Portraits of Mexican Painters",
the NatiOl'lsllnstltute of Fine Ans. MeJCico. 19471
The modem Mexican art mOvement, our movement. is a pro-
classicist movement similar to that of the period from David to
Ingres and from Cez.anne to Picasso; however, we have taken the
right road, the objective road towards a new classicism, a new
realism, the theoretical desideratum of the modem artist al
which he hopes to arrive by reconquering, in the social and
technical conditions of the democratic world. the [orms of
public art which disappeared after the Renaissance. This is more
than JUSt abstraCt theory; the work. of our ani!r! over the laSl
twenry years has been the firstslep in thjs direction, which is !.he
only possible universal route for the (uture.
The modem an movement in Mexico, of which I am onc of
the founders, is the most important arltrend in the world today.
I shall pass over the infantile or primitive stage of this
movement: the period when it was necessarily ethnographic,
archaeological and folk an.
I believe that in the plastic arts, as in science and technology,
there is inevitably a fonnal progress which extends from Ihe cave
drawings to the dynamic desires of the BaroCJue anisLS and
contemporary concern with subjective synthesis.
T do nOt believe that the dynamic contribution of EI Creco
(who was lhe most advanced exponent of the BaroCJue) was
understood by those who came after him. 1 try to adapt his
teaching to the conditions and fonus of 0111' time.
The Creed of D. A. Siqueiros 93
To put this more directly: 1 admire the modern School of
Paris for its desire for the greatest possible freedom and
creativity, in natural reaction against the "inert" laws and
routines ofPost~Renaissance academicism. I particularly admire
the magnificendy synthetical dramatic elements which appear in
some of Picasso's work, but at the same lime I reject the
domestic and "distinguished" (urn which this has taken. I am
interested in the powerful heroic and monumental spirit ofJose
Clemente Orozco, but instead of the violent grapbics he uses to
interpret his great subject matter I would prefer to use a truly
pictorial method. I bow before the magnificent craftsmanship
of Diego Rivera, but I would prefer truly modern pro-
fessionalism. I understand Rufino Tamayo's contribution to
the use of colour, his discoveries on "local colour", but I would
discard the ,hU Parnian elementS which ha\o'e crept into his work.
r applaud the democraetic spirit of the majority of Maican
painting in the generations following my own, their "good
painting" and their good craftsmanship. but I would try to
avoid their trite conventionality hhe real anist understands the
voice of the people now and in the near future, and does not
limit himselfto imitating the past or the presentJ.
Faithful to the origins of me modern Mexican School, I direct
aLI my effons (aU my work is a plastic exercise :with this obj~ve
in view) towards mural painting and mechamcal reproduGlon,
because I consider that these are public forms which respond to
the new Socialist civilisation that is taking the place of the
previous capitalist one. I search for the new realism which will
resuJt from all that artists, both past and present, have
conrributed, including the subjective contributions of modern
an; this will be a new, neohumanist realism.
I naturally believe that this can only be achieved through a
new technology, which will include the use of materials an~
tools which have b~n discovered by science, and also all the
complex problems of composition and psychology. I believe
that archaic fechnique can only produce archaic fonus and
emotions.

16
Towards a New Integral Art
(Article published in No.1 of the magllline Especios. direcled bV the
architect. Guillermo Rossell end lorenzo CilI'IlISCO. MOllico D. F..
September, 1948)
In all the periods when an flourished, it was UUtgra/. h was
integral in China, Egypt. Greece, Rome, the Christian Middle
A~es, (~e Arab, world, the pre-Renaissance, in India, in pre-
HispanIC Amenta-and even in Colonial America. It would be
c1ea~er (0 say !.hat it was a unitary (lTt , simultaneously expressed in
archlfecture. sculpture. painting and polychroming.
Th~s pl~stic unity was .the result of functional unity: a
funcuonahty born of devotion to geographical. territorial and
climatological charaaeristics. and co !.he techniques, materials
and tools which historically corresponded. It was also com-
mired to the sociaJ.aestheticobjectivesofthe period.
In the contemporary art world, in which a new Rena.issance is
begi?ning. there has been a brilliant resurgence of painting and
ar~hl~ecture, but they h~ve n~t yet found a new point of
COinCidence, because their SOCial and aesthetic concepts of
Jundion are either incomplete or insignificant.
The Mexican muraliJt movtmtnt, our movement, began with a
Jun"i?~al political purpOJe and is an exception to the gener.ll
conditions of world an which I mentioned above. This is why it
is historically so important.
Of course, the first murals to be painted in Mexico were
painted on architecturally amorphous buildings: the National
Preparatory School, the old ra.nch chapel which is now the
National School of Agriculture in Chapingo, the National
Palace, the Secretariat of Public Education, etc.
Towards a NewlntegralArt 95
Sometimes the work was done in new buildings, in which,
however, the murals did nOl form part of a pre~conceived
pietoria.l~a.rchitectural whole. Examples of this are the buildings
of the Health Ministry and the Supreme Courts ofJustice.
Finally, those of us who could already perceive the vel1'
explkable aberration of our first artistic efforts found ourselves
obliged to make arbitrary modifications to the colonial
architecture where we had to work. Such was the case of the
work I did in the old Customs building, now the National
Treasury. We vitally desired to produce a mural which would
form an integral part of architectonic space and not merely
independent panels linked [Ogether by decorative ties.
In this it is true to say that our movement was louching on the
fundamental aspect of funcrion, which was the social, human
purpose of the whole building; but it did not attain what today
we might call integral function, the objective of integral an,
which is what we have been talking about. Even today, while
we are complementing colonial buildings with our mural
paintings, buildings are being put up alongside us in which the
architects have no idea of the need to coordinate art fonns.
There is no question but that we made use of old techniques
because we were painting in old buildings. It is dear that the
methods of fresco and encaustic are organicaUy related to that
type ofarchitecture.
In all artistic manifestations, ilnd particularly so in those
plastic arts which are material arts, the superforms or styles, and
in the final resort" the aesthetics which spring from them, are a
consequence of integral function and the corresponding
techniques. It must not be forgotten that the materials and lOols
used in the plastic arts are generically important and tend to
detennine both form and style.
Up to now I have cited a historical fact and given some
opinions on it. But does the path which the evolution of society
follows allow us to suppose that art can once more become
integral, i.e. that architecture, paiming, sculpture, polychrome,
etc., will again form a whole?
It is my opinion that those who have maintained in this
twentieth century that the various manifestations of the plastic
 96 Art and Revolution
arts have become definitely liberatd by becoming aUlonomous,
are mistaken. If, over the cemuries, the highest manifestation of
artistic creation has been imegral an, then this "liberation" is
really only a mutilation, merely a porcntial reduction of the
aeSthetic phenomenon in the field of plastic ans.
The separation ofsculpture, painting. stained glass, etc., from
architecture, was a logical consequence of the individualistic
ideas of the post-Renaissance society. the liberal society. The
new society, which we see emerging today, will be mOTC and
more a collective society, infinitely broader in this sense than
mose societies which gave rise to our artistic past, because Lhey
were theocratic, collective-religious societies, in which the
people were enslaved to the rninoritywhich ruled them.
The world of today, which is only a small forelaSle of
tomorrow's world, is already a multitudinarious world for me
service, among many Olher human things, of integral plastic
ans.
There cannot be the slightest doubl: in me fmure architecture
will be on an urban scale (me architecturally autonomous
buildingwill cease to exist): greatsradiums, thearresand cinemas
<bom indoor and outdoor); immense schools, hospitals,
asylums, museums, monuments to the new social heroes and the
heroes of science and art, etc. And these buildings will be built
nol only in Ihe big towns or near the big IOWns bUI all over eve')'
country, and they wi 11 be integrally artistic as in the best periods
of the past, but in the neo-democractic and socialist conditions
of the future. This architecture with its complement of mural
painting, whether fixed or mechanically mobile, will also have a
new type of slained glass, total polychromy, toral social
eloquence, because this new art will nOI only be comfortable in
the material sense of the word, but also in the psychological,
educational, political, and above all aesthetic sense.
This integrated art can only come about through new scien~
tific mechanical technology (the technology of the past was
almost empirical and craftsmanlike). The great technological
improvements in building modern architecture, in fael in all
building, has not yet, strangely enough, been understood by
painters, sculpLOrs, designers, etc.
Iiohz
1 _
Towards 8 New Integral Art 97
A new technology which will add to cement, steel, glass and
plastics the materials invented by modern organic chemistry,
and which can be used in mural painting, monumental
sculpture, polychromy of buildings, etc.-for example,
celluloid, artificial oil doth, bakelite, vinyls, all the silicones and
pyroxilines, luminous paints, all me many forms of artificial
lighting, stuccoes and finishes which absorb paint through an
electrical discharge, just as today we have photographic paper
which is sensitive to colour, and dozens and dozens of new
materials which science will invent for us.
This new technology will also provide us with modem
mechanical LOols, such as the spray gun, the !ineograph, the
a.irograph, the pantograph for murals, the camera, the cinema
camera, etc., the electric projector and everything else which
facilitates and enriches figurative art work.
A new technology of materials implies a new technology of
forms, relative to the new forms ofcomposition and perspective,
because the old forms are too static, tOO ~dumzcal in the
philosophical sense of mt, and would not be right for the
active spaces of active architecture, of an architecture in which
geomerric forms will be highly dynamic father than static. The
idea that the rectangle, the square, the circumference, etc, are no
longer fixed forms but can be transformed into all the
geometrical shapes imaginable. A composition or perspective in
which the spectator is not thought of as a statue or as an
aUlomaton revolving on his own axis, but as a human being who
can move about in given space in an infinite number of ways.
A pictorial and sculptural technique which will be added to
architectural surfaces which are both concave.md convex, and a
combination of born , and broken up into pittonai an.d sculptu.ral
artaJ which will be part of the preconceived architectural plan.
A psychological-political technology, which must be an
elegant socia-political complement in a formal neo-realist
struCture, if its integration is to be functional. Today we find
purely decorative additions to modern architecture, and it is
quite evident that these are essemially trivial.
I have not the slightest doubt that the old technologies of
paiming and sculpture, and the old technology that most of my
98 Art and Revolution
Mexican comrades are using, would be considered "heretical"
in the new architecture and the integral art we aU want. Just
imagine for a moment a pale piece of sculplUre, a sculpture
which has not been polychromed, or a mural painting which is
really just an enlarged easel painting, the fresco and encaustic
processes, the rigid composition of an autOnomous mural, the
traditional illumination of a sculpture or a picture, and you will
understand chat they would not be right. Modem painting and
sculprure have not been right for ancient buildings, bUI the old
forms of painting and sculpture would be even worse in new
buildings.
New voices, the new voices of an integral an which can only
come from new throats.
Fundamental problems of a society which suppOrts the plastic
arts, and in which teams of the most diverse artistic disciplines
think and work together, will have to sit down and work ou[ a
solution based simultaneollsJy on theoretical premises and
subsequent practical applications.
17
Plastic Integration in the
University City
(leiter to the architect Clrl~ Lazo. in ch,lrge of building the University
Ciry of Ihe Federal District wrinen on February 20th. 19511
In answer to your questions regarding the inclusion of paint-
ings and sculpture in the overall plan for the University City,
J would like to make the following points:
1. Il is impossible to imagine that a University City could be
buih in Mexico today-in the cenrre of the modern muralist
movement-without including paiming. and as a nalUra}
corollary, sculpture.
S!. Mexico is, in fact, the only country in the world today where
a true movement of plastic integration could exist; the teon
usually used by Mex.ican muralists is: a lrUly unified modem art
movement.
g. Up to now, Mexican mural painting has been carried out in
old buildings or in buildings which were not specificall)'
planned to include painting and sculplUre.
4· Therefore the construction of the University City will be the
first opportunity for Mexican painting and sculpture to attain
the second stage. It is because this opportunity has not so far
arisen that our movement is coday in an impasse.
5· Did the architects and engineers who drew up the plans for
the University City understand this? It might be mentioned that
construction is already quite advanced and this problem has not
yet been discussed. It is quite obvious that there has been no
official and organic participation of the pertinent specialists.
 100 Art and Revolution Plastic Integration in University City 101

This matter mUSt be decided urgently otherwise our
University City wi!'l only be integrated after the manner of
Corbusier-Mire or Corbusier-Leger, which would be totally
contrary to the essence of Mexican muralism and would not
benefit Mexican architecture; this would be the lesser of (wo
evils, the greater would be that the University City should be
buill like the recently buill banks and cinemas in Mexico. in
which architeclure, paiming, sculpture. illumination. etc. have
been simuhaneously conceived but with such a commercial
sense ofaeslhelics that they can only serve as an example ofwhat
nOi 10 do. The other danger, and this is by far the worSt, is that
the University City in Mexico, a country with a great figurative
an movement and great architecrural drive. should have no
paiming or sculpture.
evaluation, which would nevertheless conform to the general
plan and a certain uniformity of style.
4· Architects, painters and sculptors, once they are integrated
into the directive body, should immediately proceed to revise all
the work in process and all the plans which are now being
developed. from the view point of plastic integration.
5· The author of these Jines will contribute his own point of
view from within this commission, like all lhe other paimers,
architects and sculptors.
6. Public discussion on this problem is impracticable for
reasons of time, and can only be abstract at this stage. Only the
opinion of specialistS with some practice in specific areas can
give results.

What then is my opinion and mat of most of the Mexican

painters and sculptors as to how to solve this problem both in
theory and in practice?

I. A commission of the most experienced Mexican muralists

and of younger paimers with mural experience, together .....ith a
few sculptors, should immediately be coopted onto the panel of
architects and engineers in charge of the project.
t. This commission, in closest collaboralion with the
architects. should resolve the following essential problems as
quickly as possible:
(a) The exterior and interior polychroming of the Uni·
versity Cit),.
{bJ The decision as to where mural paimingsand sculptures.
are to be placed, both in.side and outside the buildings.
(c) Which subjects correspond to the University City as a
whole, and which to each of the separate buildings or
sections.
g. In view of the novelty of the problem both for Mexico and
the rest of the world, J do not think it likely that the different
ideas and tastes of the architects, painters and sculptors involved
will make agreement impossible. It should be possible to sel up
separate teams, each with its own aesthetic and construClive

h

18
Chapters from the book "How to
Paint a Mural"
(From O. A. Siqoleros. How ro Pilinr if Mural, Ediciones Mexican8s.
19511
THE IMPORTANCE Of TEAM WORK
It is obvious that a mural painting, because or its size, cannOl be
carried OUl by one man alone; it cannot be an individual work of
art. Easel painting is, by its very nature, individual.
It is therefore quite difficult for painters whose menial
structure was been formed by easel painting [0 understand what
we might call the collective painter. It is very possible that
during our firs[ period, which ran from 1922 to 19!/4, we
Mexican painters exaggerated and idealised the theory of
collective work, and this was why we became sOffieo.yhat
disillusioned with it, up [Q the point where we actually thought
of it as a utopian dream. We used to speak-perhaps tOO
rnuch-of a "collective studio", like that of the Italian
RenascentisLS. What really happened was that our chronological
proximity to easel painting, with its concept of panel and not of
space, made it almost impossible to work as a team.
However, my later experiences in painting murals, in Los
Angeles, California, gave me some practical experience which
on rhe one hand dispelled my mystical ideas about directorless
team work, and on the other hand inspired me to work in a tcam
in San Miguel de Allende.
iIIb
How to Paint a Mural 103
This is the only rype of work which can teach the art of mural
painting. I allowed my collaboratoni, both teachers and pupils,
to learn for themselves. Since we all knew beforehand the
subject of the mural, I allowed them to Start tracing directly on
to the wall.
What was the result? In the first place, we found we needed a
director, in the same way as an orchestra needs a conductor. In
the second place, we noticed that each one tended to apply his
own style. And in the third place, we discovered that no matter
how good the drawing might be, it was no good for mural
paiming unless it conformed strictly to the mural method of
polyangular drawing.
It was a morley collection; each one had unconsciously tried
to pajnr his own composition as though he were doing an easel
painting and not painting something which fonned pan of a
whole. The weakest part was the tracing on the vaulled ceiling,
because the distonions ruined the sense of proportion with the
tracing on the waJls.
The members of the team decided thaI it would bea good idea
if they were to organise themselves into as many teams as there
were subject zones. Our mural was dedicated to General Ignacio
Allende, an outstanding figure in the Mexican struggle for
independence; there was one team for Allende's birth, one for
his childhood, etc. Because they were all tradirionally easel
painters, they felt that the solution to the problem lay
exclusively in what we might call the plastic or graphic language
of the painting, in other words, in its style. For the same reason,
they fell that a figure started with its dress and nOt with what was
underneath the dress. And it is a fact that the contemporary
world believes that style is both cause and effect, rather than the
culmination of an aesthetic-practical function. In mural
painting style is determined by architectural faCtors and, if the
function of the place to be decorated is taken into account, of
spatial and social factors too. If you stan off by deciding the
style, you destroy everything before you stan. We noticed that,
typical of painters in an individualistic world, they had not only
begun with the style, but thai each one had tried 10 impose his
own sryle. Like good easel painters, rhey totally forgot the
O _
 104 Art and Revolution
spatial sense of the composition and each painred an
autonomous area.
II was hardly necessary for me to join in the discussion. They
themselves were constructively critical and arrived at important
conclusions. These were, more or less texfUaJly. as follows:
In painting a mUI'al, all the painters form a learn and that
team must only have one director. The direcloT, who should be
the most experienced paimer, should, when the fundamemal
bases of [he work are decided, encourage and coordinate the
crealive contribution ofall the others; if a wall painting within a
detennined room is considered as an integral pictorial fact, it
will simplify the composition if each area is considered as the
corner of a pic[Ure. Mural paiming has no room for the feudal
techniques of easel painting; in order to paim a mural we must
find a technology that respond.s to its physical problems, .....e
must find mechanical lools, synthetic materials, and new
conceplS of composition, and more industrial methods of
working.
The painters who were studying at San Miguel de Allende to
become muralists, also realised the way new materials and.f.ools
which ~ake painting quicker and easier 10 do collectively,
detennlne me character of the work. What should we say about
a man who tried (0 paint an oil painting using the fresco style?
THE PRACTICAL WORK OF THE MEM8ERS OF THE TEAM SHOULD BE
PHOTOGRAPHED. SO THA.T MISTAKES CAN 8E OBSERVED. THE RECORDS
OF nus STAGE Of THE WORK SHOULD BE KEPT
The m~mb~rs of the team were allowed complete freedom of
expression III applying their own interpretation of what I had
taught in my lectures, and pmceeded to trace OUt both the
composition and the subject of the mural to be painted.
They were very bewildered by the problems they
encountered. They had completely forgonen to lake the
spectator into account. Nor had they taken into accoum the
geomcl'ry ofthe valli ted ceiling. Like all other painters trained in
the tradition of ea.sel painting, they thought of the mural as JUSt
a much larger picture. They had each concemratcd on the
b
How to Paint a Mural 105
section assigned to them, and forgouen the concept of the
whole. The tracings on the vertical surfaces were terribly
overcrowded, so full of figures thal these were no longer visible,
and the arches or horizontal surfaces seemed completely
shapeless.
I suggested that thcstudenls should take photographs ofwhat
they had done. When they themselves had thought things over,
they realised that I had been right about the tracings. I think that
this is .a practice which should never be omitted. The photo+
graph Isa lesson in self-criticism and I think it is essential to study
the photographs before actually starting to pailll the mural.
U~DERSTANDING THE GEOMETRIC STRUCT1JRE Of THE ARCHITEcr
Once the cracing has been done and the photographs taken,
these are put away for later use and the fonnal work is begun:
the architect's geometric structure must be thoroughly
understood. In the case orSan Miguel de Allende, thcarchitect
lived in the eighteemh ccnrury and did not leave any plans.
Therefore it was necessary to measure very carefully all the
ar~es and the walls and floor, and analyse these geometrically.
ThiS was a much more complicated task than it would have been
in a modem building. However, we were able to understand it
perfectly, particularly as in the course of our work we gOi rid of
several extra layers which had accumulated over the years, and
got down to the original struCture. I then recommended that we
should closely obsen'e the room while walking born fast and
slowly, and (his is of vital importance. Movement gave us a
bener understanding of the elliptical composition the architect
had ~sed than .cold objective analysis would have done. By
studymg the height of the walls, the relationship between the
walls and the vaulted ceiling, the inter-spatial relationship
between the arches, vaults, walls and Aoor, we came to
understand the man'ellous play of space in the room where we
were lO paint our mural. A lineal scale model-i f the term can
be used-:-built with wire, would then give us the rhythmic
geometric play of the architect and this would be the framework
for the struclure of our mural. We had already decided on the
 106 Art and Revolution
objective magnitude and subjective dynamics of our mural. We
now had the springboard ready [TOm which we could project
ourselves into OUf work.; and it was an extrao!"dinarily fine
springboard.
In my opinion, the process I have JUSt described was the only
one it was possible to follow, particularly as this was an ancient
building and !.he mural could not easily be cleaned away once it
was done. It would be a very grave error not to reconstruct what
I call the d)'namic geometry of the architect. when we do not
have the architect's plans to hand.
At this point, we should talk about the ,!ueslion of style in
painting murals in old buildings; this is a subjenwhich has been
heatedly discussed by all the Mexican muralists, both among
themselves and with easel painters, and with many foreign
anists. What style should we use when painting a mural in a
colonial building? I have always given the following answer:
There is nothing more absul"d than to reconstruct a style of
the past. In the case of Mexican colonial architecture, we would
be faced \vith an insoluble problem. There was no real mural
painting done during colonial times. In my opinion, mural
painting in colonial times manifested itself in the fonn of the
great Baroque altar pieces in high relief, with polychromed
statues and paintings, all enclosed in a gold-plated frame. This
was religious painting and the style was in keeping.
There is no doubt that in old buildings the only thing which
must be respected is the spatial factor and what I might call its
functional strategy. This is exacdy what the Italians did before
the Reniassance, and they were often working in buildings
which had been built long before.
r believe that what we did in San Miguel de Allende ratified
m}' point of view.
FUNCTION AND SUBJECT SHOULD BE DECIDED BY THE TEAM
Once the structure and the infrastructure of our mural have
been decided, we must discuss the subject; in this case it was
dedicated to the memory of Allende.
San Miguel de Allende, the name of the village where we were
b
How to Paint a Mural 107
to paint our mural, was thus called in honour of General
Ignacio Allende who was born there. In our group discussions
we commented that he had been one of the mos( capable and
forceful insurgents in Mexico. After a series of discussions we
decided mat our subject would be "Monument to Ceneral
Ignacio Allende".
We decided to divide our (overall) subject into several sub-
sections. What should these be? What historical and human
circumstances ha.d determined the revolutionary mentality of
General Allende? The best way to find out was to study the
relevant texts, and to talk to some of the more important local
inhabitants.
We discovered that Ignacio Allende had belonged to one of
the richest families in the locality. His family. of purel)' Spanish
I descent, owned tlle biggest cattle ranch in an area which was
the largesl cattle cel1lre in Mexico, and perhaps in all America at
that time. We also discovered that in colonial times the most
important tanneries of the country were situated in San Miguel
f de Allende, and that there was a big trade in exporting hides and
animal fat to Europe, and to other American countries. We
discovered that Allende's baptism had been a great event in the
town. The place where Allende had been baptised was the
sacristy of the parish church. and was still practically intact. We
discovered that as a boy he had frequently shown a spirit of
rebellion. He had been a pupil of Father Diaz de Camarra. the
first Cartesian in America. who had taught him the ideas of
Rousseau and the French Encydopaedisu. We discovered that at
a later date Ignacio Allende, in common with most other young
revolutionaTies, probably owing to their great vitality, had lived
a disorderly passionate life. and had been distinguished as a
sportsman, particularly as a horseman and a bull fighter. In the
birthplace of Ignacio Allende which aho saw his political and
military exploits, with the aid ofthe local inhabitants we came to
know his history and that of the area where the spark of
independence had been struck.
By choosing a historical subject in a place which was so
important in the fight for Mexico's independence did we help
our art in any way? Was it an arbitrary act to get a group of
 108 Art and Revolution
young artists, moslofthem foreign, to spend timeon this study?
Would it perhaps have been bener to take as a subject for our
mural something which was not related to history and had no
ideological coment? The groop contained [annalist, semi·
fannalist and pro-realist painters; none of them had any
definite theory to which lhey could make their work conform.
The decision to give OUf mural a political function and adopt
lhe [heme of Allende was unanimous; by exalting the figure of
one of our great polilicaJ heroes we were both disseminating
hislOry and fulfilling a political function. We resolved to link the
plastic beauty, rhythm, geometrical movement, colour
relationships, and me play or textures, expressions and pictorial
psychology to a ulilitarian purpose. Had we nOl done so we
would have been guilty of ridiculous escapism. When we were
discussing the subject, we decided that this type ofsubject could
only be painted in a realistic style, a style which corresponded 10
our functional purpose, in the hisrorical and aesthetic
conditions of the precise moment in which we were painting it.
But could we detennine a priori what the realistic sryle of our
painting would be? Should we paint in the realistic sryle of the
German primitives? Orthe Flemish primitives? Or perhaps we
should paim in the style of Diego Velazquez de Silva, who may
perhaps be considered the first naturalist realist? fn the style of
COUl·bet? Or in the style of the Naio brothers? Or should we
copy the pro-realist sryleofthe painters ofLhe Soviet Union? We
decided that we could not decide this beforehand. We would
decide our style during the course of our work; we would trust
to Ollr own perception and rational consideration of the
problem, based on the reactions of the public. An, we said, is
produced both by {he artist and his audience simultaneously,
and we added: an must bc suitcd [Q the audience. This is why an
was great when it had a great audience, and was poor when its
audience was socially restricted. . empirical knowledge of the inside of man, and permitted him to
All this discussion aboul the function of the room, the subject
and the style led us to divide our subject into the following
sections :
The baplism of Allende amid silk and gold, l..he gold of l.he
Baroque churches of Mexico; the wealthy childhood ofAllende;
h
How ro Painr a Mural 109
the tempestuous youth of Allende; Allende the studcnt,
concerned with the theories of the French Revolution; Allende
the conspirator; the spark of the War of Independence; the
shooting of our hero and his simultaneous apotheosis.
We had already collected a lot of hiStorical facts about our
subject. We now had to develop the theme in a series ofconcrete
studies. For example, we needed a troop of horsemen for
various sections of our mural. What would be better, pencil
sketches or photographs? We would find OUt in practice. We set
to work with both pen and camera, and after eight days offield
work we returned to the studio and compared results. The
pencil sk.etches were vague aesthetic pictures from which it
might be possible later on to reconnruCt the action of me hor5es
and men, but it would be a slow, tedious process. It was obvious
that the physical and mechanical anatomy of men and horses in
action had been perceived briefly and schematically. The
photographs, on the other hand, gave us what we needed,
although the camera has monocular vision. Thus 'we had thc
objective material from which we could work..
If an objecr is known we can create a painting from it when we
are looling at itor when it is nOt present. Even the absrract artists
admit this. A photograph merely fixes the presence of the object
and has enormous documental value. I believe that, in their
escape from reality, me modern painters of the school of Paris
committed the greatest blunder in the history of an, precisely
because a mechanical apparatus had just made it possible to
capture reality. The camera allowed objective art to emerge
from i.ts impasse, it made it possible for realism to progress. The
~mera is the indispensable 1001 ofa new realism, and it would
be impossible even co think of solving such problems without it.
The camera consolidated astronomical and astra-physical
knowledge. X+rays allowed medicine (0 acquire a more than
photograph the inside of a living organism.
It captures images: how can we, who create images, ignore or
despise it? The camera is a new collaborator which will
accompany the development of muralism and will be valid in
. the fulure a5 well as IOday.
110 Art and Revolution
DECIDING ON THE TOOLS AND MATERIALS TO BE USED
What implements did the first prehistoric painters use? They
used blood as the adhesive agent and they mixed it with earth
and natural pigmems. Some time later, they used milk. (today
milk. is used. (0 manufacture casein-based colours), It is said the
Egyptians, who invented beer. used that instead of milk or
blood.
It is quite cenain that me Egyptians and Ancient Greeks used
tree resins, like the American copal which was used by pre-
Hispanic Indians.
There is no doubt that their materials and implements
developed in accordance with their industrial development.
Of course, the intellectual contemporary world, which
believes that anistic creation can only be produced by artistic
genius, is nOt imercslcd in these problems. It has not tried to
find out more about the materials used in the past. Nothing is
known about the kind of paint used by the Egyptians, the
Greeks, the Etruscans, the aborigines of pre-Hispanic America,
etc., when they polychromed the outside of their buildings (the
very fact that these buildings had been polychromed was
ignored); all that has been said regarding this has been in the
nature ofa hypothesis, and it has referred mainly to the Mexican
murals.
It has been suggested, for example, that encaustic wax was
used to polychrome me walls. What do we know about this
process? The first murals to be painted in modern Mexico "''ere
painted wjth the encaustic process. Diego Rivera used it to paint
the amphitheatre of the National PreparalOry School in IgU,
fennin Revueltas used it to paint the right hand panel of the
NOrth Door of thaL building, Garcia Cahero used it on the
central panel, and Fernando Leal and J both used it on the
staircase of the Small School in the same building.
Our process was slightly more modern than the originaL In
order to melt our colours and to warm up those parts ofthewall
which were to be varnished with copal we used a blow torch, and
Lhis was aLso used to go over our work.
I often asked myself at the time (l was z3 years old) whether
How to Paint a Mural 1 11
there was any point in using the essence oflavender which was
the most expensive of the three components of encaustic wax?
I came to the conclusion that the lavender oil ....'3.s only used lO
keep the colours runny and easy to manage, because when we
applied the heat it evaporated. Could we perhaps use petr~l,
which cost onl)' a minute fraction of the cost of the lavenderoll?
And so I did. The paintings which I produced using petrol are
loday as well preserved as those of Rivera and the others who
used the orthodox recipe based on oil of lavender. In fact, the
only real advantage of lhe lavender was its scent.
However, we all felt, particularly Rivera, that fresco was the
best mural paint. The Egyptians, the Greeks, the Pompeiansand
pre-Hispanic Americans had ,all use? it, and so h~d th~ pre-
Renascentists, the Renascemlsls, Glotto, Masacclo, Michel-
angelo, etc. We said: we are reviving mural painting, and fresco
is the best process, " '
What is fresco painting? In those days palrtters pal,med wI,th
oils, tempera and water colours; these were all lIldustrial
products, and the artists had no idea of their chemical
composition, they only k.new where to buy them.
Some of us, particularly Rivera and myself, had been to Italy
and spent long hours looking at the ~OSt famous ~rescoes.
which we had copied; but like typical palmers of our urnes, we
had only copied the style, because at the ~me we did not lc.n~w
that style is the natural result of the media used 10 produce ll.
And so we rried, lik.e all our artistic colleagues of the POSl-
Cezanne and Cubisl period, to copy the fresco style in oil. (In
facl, the modern French paimers Slopped painting oil paintings
with oil, because lhey believed the Rat, pure colours, the
primitive colours, were better.)
So fresco had to be rediscovered. Rivera spok.e La us ofa book.
on lhe subject by Chenino Cenini, wrilten ~owards the end ofLhe
Italian Renaissance. Wherecouldwe find thlSbook. ?Wcwenttoall
the libraries, the antique booksellers, and miraculouslywe found
lhe book-bul it was wrillen in an Italian thai no one in Mexico
could understand, Not even Rivera could make sense of it..
A young Frenchman calledJean Charlot was workingwilh us,
and he had learnl al the fontainebleau School a recipe of sorts
112 Art and Revolution
for fresco painting. He told us that the idea was to paint OntO a
mixture of lime and sand which was still weI, with colouring
powders dissolved in plain water. ButJean Charlot had no idea
of the proponions 10 be used, or the consistency of the lime and
sand. We had learnt something. but not yet enough 10 be able to
start working with the system used by Giano and Michelangelo.
At this stage of our search, Xavier Guerrero appeared. a pure
Indian Mexican afthe Nahua race, who had been brought up in
the north of Mexico. His fathel" had been a "duck." (wall
painters are called "duds" in Mexico). He had learnt from his
father all the processes of applying paint to walls, which have
been used in our country fmm the remotest times. And when we
told him what Charlot had told us about fresco, he said: '"The
stuff the Frenchman calls fresco has been used here in Mexico
for years. Those red ochre walls you all have in your kitchens are
painted with fresco. Both the inside and the outside of Mexican
churches and even the house fronts have alwa)'5 been painted
with this. The only difference is that sometimes we pUt some
caCiUS juice in the water and this makes the mixture a little more
consistent and the-colour adheres better." Xavier Guerrero gave
us information regarding the local use offre'SCO.
In these lechnica1 conditions, we began to produce what
might be called the second stage of our work. As we progressed,
we discovered thaI the cactus juice was not necessary. It
produced a kind of film, rather like tempera. When the pigments
\vere dissolved in plain water, they crystallised sufficiently, and
this fixed the colour. When we returned to our study of the
origins of fresco, we came to Ihe conclusion that we wcre using
exactly the same process which had been uscd all over the world
for centuries, ev«n for many centuries befOl'e ChriSL A few years
ago, several European painters suggested that we were nor using
the true fresco process, because Our liquid penetrated the layer
of lime and cement 10 a depth of at least six millimetres. They
were totally wrong. The liquid did not penetrate at all, it could
nOl penetrate, and the crystallising process had already been
described. COll1cmporaneous painters who try to maintain the
theol)' thaI art is an exclusively emotional phenomenon do not
understand these things.
How to Paint a Mural 113
up to then we had" used the traditional methods of encaustic
and fresco. Was it possible that nothing had been invented since
with which to paint both interiors and exteriors?Was it possible
thal the originaJ techniques could nOt be improved on?
Even then 1 had my doubts, which I frequently expressed in
conversation, and also in the articles which Jean Charlot and I
wrote lOgether and published anonymously under the signalUre
of"Engin~r Araujo".
About s~'en years later I was able 10 substantiate my ideas, as
foUows:
Fundamentally, if you paim with Egyptian fresco (the
traditional mixture of lime and sand) and you want to paint
well, you must produce pre-Christian ormediaeval Christian art
(in the Gionesque style of my compatriot, Rivera, whose frescos
painted over the lasl twenty years are the beSt exampleoflhis). If
you paint with oil (and oil represented enormous progress over
fresco and the old tempera; oil made the pictorial revolution of
the Renaissance technically possible), if you paint with oil you
have to paim Baroque, Renaissance Christian an. The small oil
palnLing. the water colour, the pastel, etc. (intended for the small,
private room) belong to the nine(~mh cemury impressionist an
of the ne>.v bourgeoisie. When you use these industrially
anachronistic materials in the present time you either produce
archaeological art (Picasso in his neo-Etruscan or Pompeian
periodl, or false magic (0rozco in his murals), pseudo
modernity and nothing else. It is an immutable art principle
that materials and tools have a genetic value: they produce their
own fruit. Each period reAectS the voice of its own industry and
the level of its technique, and this is an eternal law.
None of my concrete opinions on the composition of mural
painting was the result of mere a priori intellecmal speculation,
they were all the natural result of a graded series of
"coincidences", logical coincidences, if r may use the term. The
same thing happened with regard to my views on materials.
In 193:2 the Chouinard School rij Art in Los Angeles invited me to
participate in a collective mural painting in their own building.
This was to be an external mural on a rough concrete wall. In
Mexico we had painted murals on walls made of brick and
114 Art and Revolution
plaster, but never on concrete. Would it be possible to use the
traditional fresco mixture ofHme and sand on rough concrete?
At first I thought it would be totally impossible. We decided to
consult an architect, who turned out {Q be the famous Austrian,
Neutra, and he answered our fir-st problem as follows: "1 would
not advise you to spread a layer of lime and sand on a concrete
wall, although It like all the other architects of my generation,
do not know anything about fresco nOT about mural paiming. J
have lived at a period when mural painting does nOt exist." He
then explained to us tbe different charaClerislics of mixtures of
cemem and sand and lime and sand, the way they COntract and
expand, their different ratcs of drying and Lheir chemical
peculiarities.
He then asked me to explain to him exaccly what fresco
painting was, and how the colours became finnly fixed into Ihe
mixture. When 1 explained that they became fixed because the
grains of pigment crySlallised together with the other pans of
the mixture. he said: "Cement crystallises even more strongly
than your-mixture of lime and sand. Why don't you use the same
process, using cement instead of your traditional mixture?"
And so we naned work.
II was a fact that our colours became even more solidly fixed
in cement than they had done before, bUI we found that the
cement set more rapidly than !.he lime and sand mixture, which
meant that we had to work very quickly on a very small area.
Because it was setting rwo or three times faster, we found it
impossible to work with our traditional tools, i.e. with paint
brushes.
When I observed industrial painting in the United Stales, I
discovered thaI in painting cars, refrigerators, railway carriages,
furniture, walls and many other things a spray gun was used
instead of a brush. Even the finer work was done mechanically.
Commercial art was already converted to the aerograph, the
!ineograph and the pantograph. Perhaps we could find a tool
which would be commensurate with the selling speed of the
cemene Could we use the spray gun?
We had anxious talks and grave doubts over these questions.
One of the members of my group, a famous English painler of
How to Paint a Mural 115
fonnal, academic inclination, made the following statement: "A
great pan of the painter's sensitivity is in his finger tips, whjch
are almost electrically sensitive. How can this be transmitted
into a large piece of industrial machinery?"
This appeared to be a crushing argument. But during me
night I consulled with my pillow and began to ask myself:
"When has a physical, material work of an ever been produced
without machinery? Wasn't the hard stone used 10 mark a softer
stone, a machine? Isn't the paint brush made out of wood and
bristle, produced in a factory? Weren't the implements used by
the pre-RenascemiSlS and the RenascentiSlS 10 paint the clothing
of some of their characters, mechanical tools? How about
c~arcoal holders? Didn't people maintain for years that
cmematography would never become an an because it ",,-as
produced by machinery?" And so I realised without any doubt
that we must use modern implemenlS 10 produce modern an.
And we began to use the spray gun.
How did we use it? All we did was to substitute a modern
instrument for an an old-fashioned one. It was a tool which
allowed us to work faster, but we hadn't )"et realised mat tools
play just as important a pan in determining a work of an as
materials. They are not inert insensitive media, animated by the
hand of man; they have voices of their own and man must
interpret them. When the painl brush was invented it produced
new possibilities, new styles, new forms, in figurative an. Here
was a parallel case.
Nevertheless when I began to use the aerograph, and thought
I had merely exchanged a slow tOol for a fast one, I secredy
suffered tremendously from the blurred effecl I obtained from
the new tool. We traced and modelled with the spray gun, but it
did not give us the same plasticity as our traditional brushes.
V:ith our new machine we were producing something radically
different from what we had inherited from the great periods of
the past. Now if my theory were to prove true, sooner or later we
were bound to get good results. It was simply a problem of
finding the most fertile comb ina Lion of the creative man and his
material means.
These things don't happen overnight. It is quite possible that
116 Art and Revolution
when the brush was invented it was not vcry suitable for pUlting
paint in the crevices made by hard stones on softer stones.
Doubtless it took some time for the artists of the day to discover
the "manner" of their brushes, which they probably thought of
as highly mechanical. We have similar problems. At that timewe
were using fresco colours, pigments dissolved in water. We
spread them over the layer of cement wiili our air pistol. There
v.'3.S an evident contradiction in this use of old paint and new
tools.
It was only later that we discovered that cools. like malerials.
contribute their own aesthe6c expression. The hard SlOne
ir.lposed its own style on me soft SlOne. The brush made ils own
contribution. New bristle, new fibre, new hair all determined
new possibilities. Each successive invention enriched painting
by making a greater variety of things possible.
So we see that each new implement dictates irs own sl)'le and
we have to follow it. Does this mean that the artist is the slave of
his tools and his materials? Not at aU. What I am saying is
that this is a problem of c,cation and procreation, nOt of
spontaneous gene,ation. And [wo elements are necessary for all
creation and procreation. I often say mat the first thing an artist
must do is to listen to his tools and materials and to understand
them. I often say also that you cannot paint an oil painting wiLh
fresco nor a fresco painting with oil. Perhaps it would be clearer
iff said that a flute only produces Bute music and not trombone
music; that five different pianists can each interpret a work in his
own way. but they will all be playing piano music, and the one
who plays the best piano music on the piano is the best pianist.
There is no doubt tbat without steel, concrete and plastics there
would be no modern buildings.
With regard 10 "accident" and "coincidence" in different
pictorial materials and LOols, and in rough and smooth surfaces,
it is true to say thal we find different textural accidenrs and
coincidences. Even in true fresco painting, different brushes
produce different effects and textures. Otherwise it would make
no sense for the painter to use different surface finishes and
different brushes. And how else [0 explain the use of different
types of canvas in oil painting? The special thing about oil was
How to Paint B Mural 117
that it was a thick paste rather than a liquid like previous paints.
And this leads me on to further considerations which are
important: the degree of pastiness of a paint is related to its
period; the more modern it is, the thicker the paint; and this
explains why we are always trying to find thicker, i.e. more
plastic. paints.
We could say a lot more about this with reference to definite
problems connected. wilh mural painting and painting in
general. I shall just make a few poinrs now:
1. In painting, as in alllhe plastic (physical) arts, the materials
used contain within themselves the most profound and
eloquently poetical means of expression. It is the gravest of
errors to look for poetry elsewhere than in the materials used to
produce material an.
2. A given material. like a given country. can only produce its
own formal fruit and its own poetical Rower. The painter who
does not think in terms of his materials and who thinks, like the
cubists, only of investigating geometrical abstractions, or
concentrates on the subject in lhe abstract as the surrealists do,
can only produce an imaginary tree in space, which has no
roots. Paiming is: a material an which cannOt ~ate by using
archaic or anachronistic materials and tools, precisely because
these materials detennine what is created. and behind every
material there is a particular epoch of society with irs own
industrial characteristics. This is where the artist may draw close
to or away from man, with all his historical problems. Perhaps it
was because the poetic role of materials in shaping a work ofan
was not understood that modern artists were sidetracked into a
pretentious metaphysics.
3. How could the leading paimers from cezanne onwards
believe that if would be possible to bring about "the most
important revolution in the world of painting" without going
any funher than the superficial problem of style?
f ask myself the following question: Are we then not to regard
modem Mexican painting as a revolution, since at first it used-
and many of its painters still use--traditionaJ tOols? And I
118 Art and Revolution
answer: h would not have manered particularly if the
cosmopolitan art movement in Paris had begun by using
traditional materials, as long as it had also begun to understand
that no revolution can be complete unless il.S technical means
are appropriate. But in fan they had no inkling orchis problem,
because their function was purely elitist or bureaucratic and
(herefore commercial.
A painting destined to adorn the interior of a rich man's
house had no net'd of a powerful material technique. Inside
those houses, if a picture is toO near the fire they move it, if the
sun shines on it they pull me OJrtains, if it is made of fragile
materials they protect it with glass, and everyday a smart SeTVanl
dustS it.
Public an, as we caJl it, is verydifferem. Because orits size. this
type of an requires a study of materials. First the problem of
humidity has to be consid~ed <saltpetre, namral fissures and
those: due to building subsidence, etc.l. Then the advantagcsand
disadvantages of layers of fresco on modern concrete buildings
have to be discussed, etc. And finally one understands that the
great sdemific, technicaJ and industrial progress of the modern
world has contributed enonnously [0 our pictorial technique
and to the poetry of our era.
Should we change the technology we have inherited from the
past? Our immediate anceSlOrs were incapable of improving on
"Egyptian" technique, and even those painters of the modem
School of Paris who hoped to achieve "the most important
pictorial revolution of all times" made no technical changes. I
say that we must replace our old technique with one which is not
only in keeping with the science, technique and industry of our
times, but is also an advanced technique, in the vanguard of
science. Of course, we cannot do this apn'ori orall ofa sudden, it
will be the consequence of a slow functional process, full of the
mistakes from which man always learns. Onlyone really definite
statement can be made today. The material techniques of the
past are as useless to painting as the Greek flute with three notes
is to modern music or monolithic building to modern building.
From what elements and experiments can we start to develop
our new positively modern technology? We have the mural
How to Paint 8 Murat 119
panels of the "Bolivar" amphilheatre in the National
Preparatory School (painted by Rivera}, the main door of the
same building (painted by Fennin Revuehas), the cemral
staircase of the same school {the work of Emilio Garcia Caherol,
the nonh side of the well of the staircase (Fernando Lea!), and
those which I paimed myself on the ceiling and walls of the
Small School of the Preparatory School. These were all painted
with encaustic. There is the experience of all the murals which
Rivera. Orozco and myself painted both in Mexico and outside
Mexico (mostly in the United States). These were all painted in
traditional fresco. Of the murals I painted in Los Angeles, the
first was done in fresco on white cement, using the spray gun for
the first time, and the second was done on black canem, also
with a spray gun, and making use of the camera, the electric
projector and other less imponaOl implements. My mural in
Argentina \I.'3.S done on dry white cement with silicate. The
transportable work which ""'e painted in our experimental
studio in New York, is now mainly in the collection of the
Museum of Modem Art in New York, I may mention, too, the
murals which Miguel Covarrubias paimed In San Francisco,
Califomia, and the mural of the Mexican Syndicate of
Electricians, in Mexico City, which I did in collaboration with
Antonio Pujol, Luis Arenal and Jose Renan. This last was
painted on a dry cement surface with pyroxiline paint, using the
spray gun, the camera. the electric projector, the Jineograph,
etc. Furthermore, it was the result of a truly collective effort, a
real team effort. The mural I painted in Chillan, Chile, was
produced in a room shaped like a cube and was painted on a
concave surface, buUt of masonite and filled with celotex. In the
same way, mechanical tools were also used in other murals, such
as the one I paimed in Havana.
IHJILOINC THE fiRST SCAfFOLD
We decided to paint the mural of San Miguel de Allende witll
pyroxiline, and our first task was to stan building the
scaffolding, This must always be a complete scaffold, so that the
fundamental tracings can be done according ro a method which
120 Art and Revolution
we will call harmonic inJ.tT-jpalUU correlations, and not by the
traditional method afthe Italian Renaissance. which subdivided
lhe general structure into autonomous areas; this was the
method originally used in the muralist renaissance in Mexico.
Once the scaffolding is built, we can proceed to resolve the
hannonic correlations of the objective~aesthelic rectangle of
each of the walls and aho Lhe arches.
How is this to be done? Forexample, it is possible to trace OUt
autonomous lones by using a movable scaffold, which can be
placed alongside each ....'3.11 in tum. What sort of scaffold should
we need in order to trace OUl our work as planned? For
example, in order LO trace out somelhing which goes from the
angle on the eXlreme left of the south to the extreme right of the
north, we must have someone at both ends. An interspatial
tracing is like a net which joins together each and every part. So
there musl be a scaffolding which permits the artist LO touch
every millimetre of the hundreds or thousands ofsquare metres
of the room, so Ihat painters can be placed at eveI')' fundamental
and complementary paint of the space to be painted.
The technique we use for our scaffold is absolutely primitive,
and craflSmanlike, like all contemporary art techniques. AI this
point J must make a digression which should prove useful. I
believe that the tremendous difference which exists today
be(Ween the handicraft technigue of so called modern painting
and the nature of the world which has made enormous
mechanical progress is the main cause of artistic failure. The
painter or sculptor of today paints in private studios with
archaic tools and materials for a small "select" market.
Contemporary artistic production has been limited 10 primitive.
archaic methods of production, although the world has made
incredible progress in chemistry and plastics. In conclusion: we
must try to invent a modern type of scaffolding for our mural
painting instead of the primitive type we are using today, which
is of the type used by builders and only good for working on
small areas one at a lime. We must have a light mechanical
scaffolding which can be set up and taken down very quickly,
and which should allow us to see the whole mural at all times,
because the mural must be considered as a whole. It would not
I thus lind the centre of a given space. Then we divide the venical
How to Paint 8 Mural 121
be totally beyond the bounds of possibiliry to bel.ie~e th~t in the
near future, with the development of mural painting m more
technically advanced countries, it might be possible to use a
scaffold in me form of a rotating tower, with me possibility of
extending itself in all direClions like the apparatus used in the
cinema industry. Modern commercial an can provide us with
very useful experience in this matter and in other technical
maners. There are new pail1l formulas, for example, and
movable scaffolds such as those used to paint advertisements on
very tall buildings. Of course alllhe problems inherent in a new
mural technology depend on the official and private demand
for more murals.
TH£FUNDAMEr't.'TAL TRACING: COMPOSITION
We have already decided on the function of the room we are to
decora te, .....e have decided on our subject, and made a historical
study of it, we have collected graphic material to illustrate our
historical study, we have produced sketches and photographs.
Now we must proceed to make a phOiographic analysiS of the
polyangular distortions of each area. When th.is ~as been done,
we must start rracingon the walls. In mural palnung, more than
in any other kind ofpainting, we must go from the general to the
particular. In mural paincing, the main emphasis should be
placed on the primary volumes as a structural base for
subsequent details. The distance from which our mural is to be
viewed requires that superfluous elements should be
eliminated. for example, lhe lines of the face and all other
anatomical details must be eliminated-for the sjmple reason
[hat, not being visible at viewing distance they will only weaken
the pictorial structure.
Let uS use [he concrete example ofthe mural ofSan Miguel de
Allende to show how we should proceed. First we look for what
in easel painting or simple, rectangular murals arc called
hannonious relationships. We begin to draw stTight lines which
connect angle to angle in a rectangular, geometric way. We shall
centre by a perpendicular line; then the horizontal centre; then
122 Art and Revolution
we bisect again; and this can go on ad infinitum, in the measure
which the composition requires. This is done in all the panels
which make up the space to be decorated. When this process has
been finished in each autonomous area, we proceed to trace out
the harmonious spatial relationships, i.e. the connection
between angle and angle, by means ofvisuaJ su-aightlines, ofthe
spatial volume or concavity of the whole room, or to pUl it more
Simply. from comer to corner. This is done with Siring. and the
projection on the walls of the places where these strings cross is
observed from the differem Wwing angus. This is what gives
spatial unity to the different pans of an architectOnic space,
because it unites lhe arches with the vertical surfaces and the
floor. We can thus surround the spectator with a "harmonious
machine" which will provide him with harmonious solutions no
matter where he is in the room, and whether he stands or sits,
and looks up or down.
After this, it is necessary to Start marking Out on this
framework, Ihe elements which refer directly to the subject we
have chosen. On the wall or area which will deal with the
baptism ofAllende, we trace out the general composition which
corresponds to that area, we observe it from its three, four, five
or mo:e fundamental angles and we then draw the ground plan
on which the figures and other voluminous objects will move.
Before allowing people to come into a room, the room must
be prepared just as the ground must be prepared before a troop
of horses operates on it.
When all (he general fundamentals have been finished, we
pass to the details, the realistic aspect of our subject. We shall
find even more distOrtions in the details than we found in the
great masses of our composition. The small geometric forms
which make up the figures and other objects suffer most acutely
from t.he contraction of the surface on which they are painted.
When looked at from the front, a person can be represented by
an oval, but when this oval is viewed from the central angle of
the room it becomes so flattened that it cannot comaina normal
human proponion. It must be extended or amplified into what
is almost a circle or horizontal elipse. But then what happens at
the fromal angle or the less narrow angles? This is the problem,
How to Paint a Mural 123
and it has to be solved by shadingordraping. or by using part of
another figure. Each case requires its own particular solution, so
that the spectator gets a normal, realistic piCture from whichever
angle he view's it. We find a purely instinctive solution to this
problem in the work of EI Greco. EI Greco, in his big murals
solved this problem most adrnirablywith a reflection. a cloud. a
fluttering drape, the shoulder of another figure, etc. We must
think out our solutions beforehand and make use of all the
modern tools at our disposal. as you will see later. When me
experts understand that there are many physical problems in
art, perhaps they will decide 10 make a study of them in order to
find solutions.
DETERM:INING THE FUNDAMENTAL SPECTATOR POINTS: COMPOSITION
In 19302 I was conrracted by the Chouinard School of Los
Angeles. California. to teach a class of applied mural painting.
What they realJy wanted was that I should teach the students
what I had learnt about painting with fresco in Mexico.
When I went to the Chouinard School of Art I received my
first surprise: they wanted me to painta mural on an uutsldt wall.
O/Jm to the Jun and th.t rain and whjch could bt UtTl txtfflJjutlyfrum tIlL
Jtrttt. Furthermore it was a solid concrete wall.
In Mexico--I thought to myself-we have painted on brick
walls, on masonry. on stone and even on a kind ofvolcamcscone
called "tegomle".
The wall could be seen from the street and was seen by an
increasingly large public who, as they either walked or rode by.
saw it from a very sharp angle, from the extreme right and
hardly ever directly from the centre, because the top ofa wall cut
off their view. Up to then I. as a typical fresco painter of the first
mural period, intellectually (though not instinctively)
considered the mural panel as nothing more than an enlarged
easel painting. I thought of it as a problem which had to be
resolved inside a much larger rectangle. but I thought of that
rectangle as a static fonn and did not think of projecring
outWards from the horizontal and vertical extremes. An
independent, autonomous rectangle viewed by a human
124 Art end Revolution
spectator. My colleague Diego Rivera still uses that technique
today. twemy.seven years later. I now began (0 have my first
theoretical doubts. Would it not be bener to resolve !.his mural
in accordance wilh the angle from which passers by were going
to see it? Should I take into account only the spectator who
would actually come into the patio and slafld motionless in
from of the mural. as though he were looking at an easel
painting?
After we staned OUT work, and while I was still observing the
wall from the angles, both near and far, from which the
immobile spectator would see it, something happened which
was ofimponance both to my pupils and myself.
We had a habit of wandering around Los Angeles, looking at
the important buildings and dreaming of hypothetical
commissions for murals and hypothetically solving the
problems these would present. We often visiled big government
buildings, railway stations, etc. And one day we arrived at me
Public Library. From the entrance you walked down a long
corridor to an enormous vestibule in which an English
academic bad painted a large rectangular mural. From the
entrance to the corridor you could already see part of the
mural, which seemed to grow in size as you walked down the
corridor. When you arrived at the entrance to the vestibule you
could see the whole thing. Visitors then had to proceed to a
lateral door, either to the right or me left, situated at each
extreme of the mural.
Once again I asked myself whether composition and
perspective should be projected from a mathematically
symmetrical fixed .point at an adequate distance from the
rectangle. Could you consider the spectator as a statue on a fixed
point, gyrating on his own axis? The more I thought about it,
the stranger it seemed: the compOSition limited to a rectangle;
the rectangle considered as a static, geometrical form; the
traditional, rectilinear perspective---they were all undoubtedly
false and unscienLific (with all due respect 10 the historical merit
or Leonardo da Vinci). Composilion limited to the mural
rectangle, but using curvilinear perspective was also completely
false. (This idea of a spectator moving along a fixed axis had
How to Paint a Mural 125
already started to worry a talented, perspicacious Mexican, Luis
G. Serrano.) The human spectator did not fit into either of these
MO categories, and the only difference in the seco~d case was
that the line became curved and turned the cubiC space of
rectilinear perspective into a spherical space.This was progress,
of course, but only a weak beginning.
What were we to do in San Miguel de Allende? From my
former experiences, t developed a premise which I considered
fundamental to future murals: The pictorial c()1TIpositicn rfthe mural
must conform to the normal IT(U1.Jit of a speclatar in the plau wh"t the
mural is to be pain1ed.
Whal would this normal transit be at San Miguel de Allende?
Let us have a look at several points: the entrance (0 the room,
through a door at the north-west end; the mathematical centre
of the room; the extreme southern and northern angles, and the
mathemaLical position in fronl of each of the secLi~:ms.
Let us examine a concrete example of what might be called
the superposition of only twO "spectator points": that of the
entrance and that of the centre of the room, and perhaps to an
extent the southem end and centre of the room. Ie is d~ired to
obtain normal realism from each of the angles, because it would
be absurd to suppose that the wall will be seen from only one of
our angles, whether from the entrance, which would be frontal,
or from the most obtuse angle, which in this case is the
mathematical centre; an angle of approximately 12·5 degrees.
We must pay dose attention to this coordination of spectat~r
angles throughout the whol.e of our.work, at ~very stag.e. It IS
important in the geometrlcal tracmg, the. l~telWeavl~g of
perspectives and the choice of colour <Colour.m ~Ifesta~hshed
its own terms and this is one of the few contributions whIch the
mobbish formalism of Paris has contributed to the theory of
technique).
All true architectonic space, whether indoors or out, concave
or convex, is a machine, and its pans, such as the walls, floor,
arches, ceiling, etc" are the wheels of this machine. which must
be seen as a machine which moves rhythmically, with a
geometric play of infinite intensity. Unless I am mistak.en, a
wheel by itself, or twO wheels by themsdvcs, or even three, even
126 Art Bnd Revoluaon
if they are connected to each other, are of necessity static parts of
a body which is geometrically dynamic. One wall, two walls
facing each ocher, even the combination between an arch and a
panel, form a dynamic, rhythmic machine in which the ellipses
cross and mingle with each other. The parts on their own are as
immobile as easel pictures, under the yok.e of their frame. As we
shall see later, and in this lies the marvel of the phenomenon, it
is only the acrive spectator inside me mural concavity who can
switch on this rhythmic. architectonic machine. We shall see
how when the spectator stands still, the machine stOps moving.
It has always seemed to me one of the powerful
manifestations of life that al1 the volumes of man, both those
which he encloses within himself and those which surround
him, are activated by his own movements. As we walk or ride
along th~ street, the shapes of me houses, the trees, the people.
everything stretches or shrinks with me rhythm of our
movement. Perhaps it has been easier to observ~ this from
modern transport vehicles. Remember how the inclination ofan
airplane allen our view of me ground, and how mountains.
valleys and the microscopic things we see moving down below
seem to acquire an extraordinary geometrical activity, which
could not be observed from the vehicles of the past. This same
phenom~non, dependent on the rhythm and speed of the
spectator, happens in an architectonic space.
II is essential to make use of this phenomenon in mural
painting. Anyone who paints murals without taking this into
account is not really a mural painter. And this is why I say, and I
do not exaggerate. that all mural painting in the past, even that
of my Mexican colleagues, and most of my own work, i1 not yet
muralpainting. And although thjs may seem blasphemy, I say that
all the best mural paintings of antiquity, together with those of
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, are not really murals,
because their authors did not take sufficiently into account the
movement of the spectator.
In my opinion a truly spatial mural has not yet been
produced. All that has been done is to organise the balanced
interplay ofautonomous panels. I shall recall only one example,
perhaps the best: Michelangelo's Sistine ChapeL. We see there a
How to Paint 8 Mural 127
mural painting, The 1.aJtjudgemmt, and on the ceiling{although
the lateral paintings are not his) a work ofgenius which is, when
all is said and done, a series of murals painted horizonlally and
from top to bottom. Each of these panels or mural pictures has
its own subject and its own unitary composition, and they are
connected to each other, in the way ofthe times, by lrompei'ctiL or
simulated omamental architecture.
There is no evidence in the Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo
had any theories about the unity of architectonic space. I have
often thought that it might have been the materials and tools of
those times whicb did nOt permit a uniform conception of a
naturally active architectonic concavity. It is well knO\\'1l that
fresco is a long, slow job, especially on the ceiling and arches. It
is impossible to make rapid alterations in order to correel the
whole.
We can also find an adequate example in Mexico: the
painting by Diego Rivera in the ex-chapel of Chapingo, now the
School of Agriculture. This is perhaps Rivera's most complete
work, because it covers the whole of an architectural unit and is
not just a succession ofpanels like those of the Ministry of Public
Education or the National Palace. Diego Rivera is a new
Michelangelo, fOUf hundred years later, and followed the same
method-mat which the material technique offresco forced on
him. In the ex-church of Chapingo, as in the Sistine chapel,
mere is harmonious coordination of many panels, each with its
own subject and solution, linked together by trompe i'en/.
We cannot discuss the problems of pictorial, architecton.ic
space without utilising the Renaissance knowledge of
perspective, which is still valid, although there has been some
progress in this field in the last few years. There are twO kinds of
perspective-rectilinear and curvilinear.
Leonardo da Vinci perfected rectilinear perspective, which
assumes the spectator to be a Stalue on a fixed base looking at a
fixed poim in the centre ofa straight line on the horizon, known
as the vanishing point.
Curvilinear perspective was invented by various paimers at
lhe end of the last century or the beginning of this one, and
presupposes a spectator who is also a statue, but one which
 128 Art and Revolution
revolves on an axis, which thus curves the line of the horizon,
but oddly enough does nor modify the vanishing point. This
implies progress to the following extent: the first type of
perspective envisages space as a cube and the second as a sphere,
which is much nearer (0 the physical reality of the visual world.
However, the real spectator is not a statue, bUI a man walking
along a plane and activating all the geometric fonns about him
through his movement. A rectangle becomes a truncated
PY'"amid. inclined sometimes 10 !.he right and at others to the
left; circumferences can become eliptica1, etc. An active
spectator requires a new system of composition and con-
sequently a new concept of active space in architecture.
Howdid I arriveal these conclusions? Was it merely the result
of speculation? h was the resuh of the murals I painted in Los
Angeles in 193i and 1933.
These murals faced the street and were to be seen by passers
by, frequently from cars or buses passing by at some speed. In
San Miguel de AJlende we were working on an interior. It could
be said that the mural of Los Angeles was painted on aconvexity
and thai of San Miguel on a concavity, an architectural
concavity. We therefore had to consider a spectator moving at
normal, slow speed, who would emer the room through its only
door. On emering the room, Lhe visitor sees a frontal area and
to his left a wall which is placed at about 10 or 15 degrees with
regard to himself. This was our first observation point. He then
walks to the mathematical centre of the room and takes a
general look about him. In order to do this he would turn
completely on his own axis and would move hJS head up and
down. This was our second observation point. The spectator
then advances towards the south of the room which shuts offhis
vision of the oLher end. This was our third point. Then he walks
from one end of the room to the other, while moving his head
up and down and from side to side. At this point, the
architectonic machine starts working in accordance with the
rhythm of his movements, and when he gets to the other end of
the room we get a situation similar to the one at the south cnd.
This was the fourth point. The spectator having obtained a
general view of the room, now proceeds to study it in detail. He
tr
How to Paint a Mural 129
walks about, standing symmetrically in front of each picture, or
panel, with part of the arches above it, which he raises his head
to see. The room is divided into ten zones or pands, so he makes
ten different StOps. This was our fifth point. What would have
happened had our work been composed in the tradilional way?
In order to see it all, he would have had to walk round as though
it were a museum,looking ateach bit in turn, and without trying
to see them from different angles.
Ifyou were to ask. mewhat scientific laws we would have to use
in order lO solve the problem ofmural composition in tenns ofa
real, live spectator, I would have to answer than none has been
fonnulated yet. Our method is purely empirical. No scientist
has yet investigated this problem. We can say that all traditional
methods of perspective are false. And all the laws formulated by
the cubists, and which came to us through Diego Rivera, are
false, because they function in terms of a static geometric body,
and envisage the rectangle as a visual rectangle, when in mural
painting this is not true. I believe the error lies in considering a
small rectangle which can be totally observed 011 once by the eye
to be the same thing as a large mural rectanglt', whic.h cannot be
totally seen in the same way, and therefore suffen distortions in
those parts which are furthest from the eye in every direction;
and these distortions are increased when the spectator moves.
The only practical method of composition in architeCtonic
space at the moment is to look at the series of problems to be
solved, and to resolve them by looking. The camera and the
movit" camera are magnificent collaborators in this task,
although they do not correspond to man's bi·ocular vision. In
fact, photography accentuates the distortions.
MAKING USE OF A POLYANGULAR METHOD TO CORRECT THE TRACING
It is necessary to use a polyangular method in painting murals,
which will take into account the ten, fifteen, twenty or more
angles from which a spectator may see the work. How lO do
this? A separate composition and organisation must be worked
out from each of (he angles decided upon, and the compositions
relative LO each angle must then be superposed so as to give the
 130 Art and Revolution
spectator the illusion of reality from every point in the room.
Since we had no past experience (0 go on, we had to work this
out for ourselves.
First we conformed our drawings in the normal way (0 our
first JptclaJor point. We then photographed the work from that
point. We then photographed it from all the other points, in
order of importance. This gives us irrefutable evidence of lite
approximate distonion which is visible. We then worked on the
photographs taken from the angles, and corrected them so as La
normalise the planes, and volumes of the objects.
I have only spoken of the camera so far, and not of the
projector, because r wanted lO devote a shan paragraph to
this, in order (0 express myself more dearly. If we take the
drawing as seen "normally", not from an angle, and project it
on to the panel from another spectator angle, we get something
~ry similar to the original, because the ima~'e itself distorts as it
becomes longer. Th is is why me projector is so important. When
I say very similar, I mean that it is not identical to the original,
because when the projector projects an image sideways OntO a.
wall, the pictUre bec:omes distended towards the far side of the
panel. This is quite logical, if the distance from the projector
lens is measured.
In a field which has been investigated so little, there is infinite
room for experiments, research and discoveries. We are merely
reading the first letters ofan alphabet which is hundreds of times
larger than our whole language. So we found it easy in San
Miguel de Allende to make progress. Our photographic
colleague (there should always None or twO photographers in a
team of mural paintersl,john G. Roberts, invented an addition
to the projector lens which helped w to perfect to a very high
degree the excessive stretching of figures, which I mentioned
previously. This was a venical axis, which moved the glass on
which the drawing was placed from one side to another
according to the angle at which the projector was placed.
Some of the other members of the team, for example David
Barajas and Ben Hammil, began to work out formulas and
theories, based on our work with the projector, with regard 10
the problems of building pictorial or graphic forms on plane
surfaces seen from an angle.
h r
How to Paint 8 Mural 131
Can you imagine how difficult it would have been for us to
o:ganise the horizontal planes of the ceilings, floors and arches
Wllhom t?e use ofth~ camera and the projector?
There IS ~o.dou~)[ about it: the problems of mural painting,
a~d of pamung III general, are fundamental1y tied to the
dl~covery of new technologi.es, with all the real significance of
thiS world. The archaic techniques of so called modern
European painting can only lead to retrograde solutions,
whatever sophisticated plaSticity is given to the geometric
elements and general forms which a.re the skeleton of all
painting, both figurative and abstract.
. ~ spoke of the pro~lem of the arches. Although they are
lOumately connected with the walls, I will mention a few points.
The arches are not only horizontal to the ground, and therefore
uncomfortable for the speclator to look at, but they are also
concave and this is a further problem. There are profound
differences between a concave and convex surface and a flat
surface. If all geometric surfaces are active in tenos of spectator
movement, the concave surface is much more active. Distortion
is .hi~h1y incr~ased. Each surface imposes its own style of
pamung a?d the concave surface requires curvilinear drawings
and sphencal volumes, and the toral elimination of the true
straight line, although not of the apparently straight line, which
can only be seen from certain angles of vision.
In th~ technical report I published after painting my small
mural, 10 ~a Habana (1943), titl~d "Allegory of equality and
confraterruty of the black and white races in Cuba" there is an
objective repon on these concepts of mine. '
The technical charaCteristics are as follows. It is semi-exterior
painted in a covered gallery overlooking a street. The covered
s~rface is 40 square metres (five metres long by eight metres
high); except for the horizontal pan on the ceiling, it was
concave to a dept!' of more than a metre and built on six 45
degree angles. Thl~ was ~n unusual fonn of pictorial surface,
and .the spectator Viewed It from a very close position; the only
partIal antecedents were my murals "Plastic Exercise" in the
Argentinaand "Death to the Invader" in Chillan, Chile. But this
presen~ mural was much more concave. I exploited this
concavity so as to emphasise the active character (deformations
132 Art and Revolution
or dislOroons) which is found in every type of architectonic and
geometrical space. I made use of my previous experience to try
and build a more dynamic, a u-uly dynamic srructure, because I
believe !.hat so far we have only produced graphic sno.pjhot.J of
movement, a fixed graphic movement, but not movement itself
as a "isual phenomenon. I had previously decided to make the
concave surface appear convex, and the horizontal surface
vertical, by using Iricks of painting. And when I finished I was
convinced that !.his small mural had enriched me possibilities of
fumre murals. The photographs that were laken amply proved
that the concave parts looked convex and the horizomal parts
looked venical.
FROM TRACING TO COLOUR
My practice has led me to the conclusion thal the preparatory
organisation of space should not be limited to the lineal tracing,
but that immediately afterwards masses or flat areas of colour
must be applied because (and this is one of the things which have
been rediscovered by the abstractionists of the cosmopolitan
School ofParisl colour has a spatial value, since itgives different
depths. There are as yet no laws about this, nor any fonnulas
obtained by experience. The cubists, who constructed pictorial
space with Bat colours, have not given us any information,
ahhough they have filled page after page with supposedly
scientific laws which are really emotionally instructive. It is
neither exaggerated nor slanderous to say that all this is juS[ a
bluff, one of the many which suit the international markets of
galleries like Rosenberg's or BereinJeune's.
I was perfectly conscious of this and did not provide the
members of my team with any false infonnation as we
proceeded to complement our spatial organisation of me mural
at San Miguel de Allende with colour, using only our eyes and
our feelings. For example, in the panel which was subjectwise
lhe most important, the one on the extreme south depicting the
death and apOtheosis of our hero, we decided to represent a
range of mountains.
How to Paint a Mural 133
As we began to apply the colour 1 called the students'
attention to an interesting phenomenon: the luminous colours
(for example the golden ochres> seemed further from our eyes
than the browns and siennas. Quite often the wann colours,
those in which red predominates (the cold colours are those in
which blue predominates), appeared further away than the
others, which according to our traditional ideas are supposedly
atmospheric.
What could this be due to? When will the exp"u help us to
understand this scientifically? I think I can put forward the
following theory: colours havt noautornmlOUJ value norbelligemuy if
their oum; they only livt thr()Ugh chramalic relatioruhips with the colour.!
around them.
It is perfectly obvious that when blue is surrounded by reds it
is not the same as a blue surrounded by greens and yellows, even
though it is physically the same colour. There is no doubt that
this is a dialectical problem. In this connection, I GIn recall a
case that the guides in Italy knew by heart. They used pieces of
card to mark off an a.rea which was an almos! violet blue, in a
mural ofFra Angelico, and when the blue patch was CUt offfrom
the rest, it turned grey or drab. I can understand that tile Italian
pre-Renascentist5 and the RenascentisLS had to re~olve the
problems of the blucs by studying the colours around them,
because they were: frequently short of really blue pigment which
would stand up to the lime surface offresco painting.
We called our system ofdividing up the room into areasofflat
colours, thejundammlm or milia! polychromy if tht worA. By using
colour in this way we accentuated the anatomy of the
architecture and this is a classic method which we have amplified
on theoretica.lly.
In pre-Christian antiquity, in the Middle Ages, the pre-
Renaissance and even during part of the Renaissance,
architecture and sculpture were always polychromed. The artists
of those times used colour to delineate architeclOnic areas, the
columns of a building, the bases and capitals of columns, door
frames. cornices, etc. Even today in some small villages in
Mexico, in Italy and perhaps in Asia, builders will always finish a
house with this kind of polychroming. The more outstanding
134 Art and Revolution
parts are painted in briUiam colours and the other parts with
colours that blend into the background. Polychromy in
sculpture was used in the same way. In our mural at San Miguel
de Allende we highlighted the architeCl's elliptical composition
through the use of colour, we accentuated the concavity of the
vaulting and the relationship of the arches. We used colour in
me same \o\>3.yas itwas used in the village houses ofSan Miguel de
Allende.
According fO our plan, the mural would be polychromed in
accordance with the general composition, and in keeping with
this we also decided to polychrome the Roor with coloured
cemem, using the process of coloured artificial mosaic.
I cannot say any more about the use ofcolour, because colour
is an intensely personal thing and you can no more theorise
about colour than you can tell a person how to draw.
BUILDINC THE SECOND SCAFFOLD, A MOVARtE ONE THAT CAN BE
DISMANTLED EASILY; REAL MURAL PAINTING IS ONLY POSSIBLE
IF THE TOTAL. WORK CAN BE VIEWED AT ALL TIMES
I will now refer to the scaffolding from which the aCtual painting
is done. It must be movable and easy to dismantle. Why?
Because, as we have seen before, in modern mural painting it is
necessary to be able to have an uninterrupted vicv.' of the wbole
of the surface to be painted. In this type of painting you must
always leave free that pan of me floor along \<"hich the spectator
is expected to walk. How can we do mis? We must realise that
once again we have very little previous k.nowledge to go on (it
should not be forgotten that the scaffold the mural painter us~
tOday is quite simply that used by a builder orpaimerl and so we
had a kind ofcompetition among all the members ofthe team to
design what we needed. Those who came from a highly
industrialised and mechanically minded coumry found an
excellem solution quite easily. They built four towers or trolleys
on wheels, which could be screwed IOgether, and were of such a
height that it was possible to work on the walls and the arches
simultaneously. They could also be pushed right across the
room very easily by one man, and taken apan in less than ten
How to Paint a Mural 135
minutes. You might think that this solution was so obvious that
it does nO[ need a separate chapter. In fact, it was something that
anyone could have ~hought of, but it is so intimately linked to
the pr.oblem. of spatIal compOSition that it was necessary to call
anenuon to IL
I have said before that both with respect to the scaffolding and
to ev~l"""y 0t?e~ aspect of the material techniques of paiming, we
are stIll pamung the way the Egyptians ploughed. What sort of
~ffold ~ilI be used in the future? We have some inkling of this
III the cinematographer's moving trolley, with its extens.ible
ar:m. We should have something like this for mural painting, but
with several arms. What a difference it would make to mural
paiming. if we could view its developmem constantly and
systematically from a modern piece of apparatus inStead of our
own wooden towers! Once again, I must underline the
il11ponance of tOOt5 in all the physical arts. There is no doubt that
the development of metallurgy and metal wind instruments
made an enor~o~s difference to the orchestra. 1 would say to
those absr:acu~)flJS~ who look for poetry outside matter: it is
~aHer whICh gIVes flse to poetry, in painting as in all the arts and
III the largest and small~1 manifestations of the cosmos.
To sum up: even the scaffolding is important (0 the painting.
SUPERVISING THE PHOTOGENICQ.UALITY Of THE WORK
Photography was useful in analysing the geometrical struclUre
of me room we were 10 decorate, il helped us with the visua.l
deform~lions and with all the other slages of our work, so why
should It not serve to analyse the whole finished work?
In a.11 the murals I have painted since 1932 I have followed this
proce~ure befol-e finishing. Of course the lack of money has
sometimes SlOpped me from doing this 10 my entire satisfaction.
On the J:'rinciple that our work is a public form of an, we must
see that It. reaches as many people as possible. We can therefore
say (be~glng the p.ardon of those who believe in the mystique of
aesthellcs) that, m the last resort, mural painting musl be
p~otoge~ic, i.e. easily photographed in black and white, so that
It IS not bmited to the physical place where it is paimed and can
136 Art and Revolution
be circulated to a wider public. And o.nly in t~is way, will i,t b:e
really public. Although originally thIS was lmpos~lble. It IS
becoming more and more easy. In the past (a~d only In the later
period of the Renaissance) prints and engravmgs were mad~ of
murals. Through these, the Spaniards were able to appreCIate
some of the finest work of the Italian Renaissance, which laler
influenced lheir own work. There was no orner way by which
the Mexican painters in colonial lim,es ~ould have known
anything of the Italian Renaissance which mfluenced them so
greatly. If the artists of the Renaissance an~ latcr were able to do
this. surely we, with all the means at om dISposal, can do much
more.
A question arises here. Do ....-e just wa,ot ~o reproduce any kind
of painting? Not at all. But .our pa~nngs should have the
ultimate artistic objective ofbelog multiply reproduced:
Since we have not )'et finished the mural at San Miguel de
Allende t shall have to refer to previous experiences with my
own m~rals. Firstly, Lhe mural of the Mexi:an Syndicate. of
Electricians. Many photographers, both MeXJcan and foreign
ha\'e pholOgraphed this, including photographers from ~e
Museum of Modern Art in New York. t drew the followmg
conclusions from this first experience. A mural which has been
planned a.nd paimed with a sense of space (":01 that of an easel
painting or a mural panel) must be pla~ned 10 terms of several
points from which it can be viewed. Ifuus has not been done. the
phocograph will not reveal the pictorial ~uth of the mural. its
visual magic. Many photographers find thiS h~rd to under~tand.
because in photographing worlu of art they, like most pamt~rs,
have the routine concept of the static rectangle. They prOVide
us with photographs of objects divorc~ from their surround-
ings. It was alright to phowgraph Isolated par1.5 ?f pre-
Renaissance and Renaissance murals and those of the mtserable
academic period which followed-because they were re;;Llly
a series of separate pictures joined to~ether. In tI.le furure,
cinematography will be of the utmost Importance ~n ph010-
RTaphing murals. The cine camera can rep~o~uce lJ1$ual truth,.
and that is rhe pictoriaL truth of mural painting; because ?f
its powel' (Q move. it can reconstruct in a given architectOnic
How to Paint a Mural 137
photograph the normal active process of the spectatOr, which
was the basis of the painting's composition; itean reproduce the
path of the spet:tator from the funhermost cornerright up to the
picture and thus pick out differences in texture. If the film is
made in colour (and there is no doubt that black and white will
disappearJUSt as the silent cinema has done) then the mural will
have been totally reproduced for circulation to the people.
I have still to mention something which I think will be of
importance to what we might call the Poly-Art of the future.
Somelhing which follows logically after my remarks about
filming mural paintings. Evel)'one knows the animated canoon
film which resulted from a combination of drawing, colour and
the cinema; Walt Disney was the most famous producer of these
cartoons. The cartoon makes me wonder whether it would be
possible to arrive at a relationship between fonnal mural
painting and the cinema. Would it come to the point where a
finished work of art would aCtually be Lhe colour film made of
it? It has always been difficult forme to understand why modem
painters, having seen these cartoons. have not looked for the
relationship between polychromed abstract forms. Now we can
understand that they failed to do so because they were not up to
date in their material technique. and their so-called modernity
was in fact archaeological. But what these "chi-chi" painters
have failed to do, could be done by the neo-realists, Can the
sensitive reader imagine it-a real cinematOgraphic repro-
duction in colours of a mural with a sense of movement
and space and deep themadc significance? What would the
masters of the Renaissance say if they could see their murals.
which although public could not be moved from the walls they
were painted on. reproduced and sent all over the world so that
everyone could see almost the same thing as the visitors to the
original murals can see? Painting and the cinema can do
wonderful things together.
 -
19
Towards Realism in the Plastic
Arts
(LeCture dellve'ed in the Manuel M. Ponce Room of the Palace or Fine
Arts, Melrico City. July 2nd. 19541
Tonight I .shall talk about nineteen points and hope co make a
methodical contribution to this series of discussions organised
by me architen, Alberto T. Ani.
. I. Fo~unalely, these discussions on architecture and plaStic
Integration are~onducted in a mOTe direct, demouaricway than
lh~y used 10 be In the old academist elitist days. II would be only
faIT l~ acknowledge thaI this is due in no small part [0 what some
architects refer 10 as "the rough dialectic of me painlers who
have been auacking the distinguished tribune of the House of
the Architecl".
As -:,rchircc[ Pedro Ramirez Vazquez said during the lecture
he del,~ered on this very platform, "the ordinary man whom we
are trylOg to serve, has the right to give his opinion about
architecture",
2. By "realism" we should understand (while giving the word
all the conventional ~eaning it has acquired in usage): logic,
common ~ense, devotion to proven facts and, with regard to
the plamc arts, the discovery of physical determinants
(geographical, climatological, etc.), and also of the determinants
of subject, f~rm and style, ~hen we mean figurative, plastic arts.
When referring to the plastIC arts we must understand realism to
~ean ~he suppression of all a priori impulses and all arbitrary
Invention.
Realism in the Plastic Arts 139
3. By integral an-what Mexican painters have called unitary
art since 1922-we should understand the phenomenon of
simultaneous!y created architecture, sculpture, painting,
illumination, etc, A compound but indivisible phenomenon,
which the ancients simply called archit~ctlJ.re, since they could not
conceive of architecture being anything but integral, because it
was always the political or polilico-religious effect of a state
undertaking, It was always ideological. Their architecture and
plastic integration were the expressions of a theocracy, under
the yoke of an elite. The official art of its time. Non-state
architecture, separate from painting and sculpture, ....'as a
product of what we might call the liberal or modern world.
4. Mexican architecture was great when it was essentially
realistic, in accordance with the political, physical and technical
determinants I mentioned earlier. I refer to pre-Hispanic and to
a !('sser ~egree colonial an::hitecrure. In any case, they a~ both
extraordinary examples of lOtegral art: magnificent examples of
political realism-religious political realism, of course--in
integral an.
5. The architecture produced in independent Mexico, before
the regime ofPorfirio Diaz, was a non-realistic architecture and
therefore alien to the idea of plastic integration. It was an
architecture which reflected the taste ofan elite, although there
were individuals with talent, like Francisco Tresguerras. It was
an architecture which did nOt contribute anything to the world
of architecture. It was d;cltlJsi in the sense that it was not the
hi~toric~l, social expression of a particular class, unlike its pre-
Hlsparuc and colonial predecessors. This was doubtless due to
the political instability of Mexico at that time.
6. The architectures of the Porfirio Diaz period was even
worse. It is an example of the worst kind of anti-realism that
man bas created~ and what little plastic integration there was,
was dreadful, It was the expression of all imperialistic oligarchy.
It was the work. of an incipient bourgeoisie which did not
achieve either power or economic independence,
7. The architecture of the "revolutionary period", which was
built about 1910, towards the end of the government of General
Cardenas, was still as anti·realistic as its immediate predecessor,
 ,.".u" .. ""' ...,.......,,
although it moved a little nearer to inlegratingwith the arts and
the country by copying the Californian st)'le called Mexican
Colonial. This architecture was the expression of the nouveau
riehe bourgeoisie, with meir newly embezzled riches and
increasing submission to the imperialists who gave them
economic suppon.
8. Our contemporaneous Mexican muralist movement,
which dates from Ig2i, although its 6rSllheorericai antecedents
stretch back £0 Ig06 and 1911, was the most imponam
movemenl !awards plastic integration and realism in the whole
world, although at the time it was still infantile.
To return to architecture, even for purely romantic reasons, is
a step in the direction of plastic integration and also towards a
conscious premeditated effon to arrive al complete realism.
There is no doubt thal Mexican muralism is the expression of a
sincerely ami-imperialist section of lhe people and belongs to
the anti-feudal revolution which we call the Mexican
Revolution.
g. Modern architecrure based on the doctrines of "modern
European and Yankee architecture of the vanguard" was
established in our country from the second decade of the
century, twenty years behind our mural ism, and ilS magnitude is
undoubtedly symbolic of Mexiw's great potentiallo create its
own national architecture. This can already be seen, mainly in
the great private buildings in the cemre ofour capital and in the
University City; but it would be ridiculous to claim that these
buildjngs show evidence of autonomous national creativity and
are a.n imponam contribution to world architecture. Although
they are the work oftalemed and audacious architects, withouta
doubt the best Mexico has had since her independence, the style
is still a borrowed one and therefore essentially anti-realist.
Their architecture is not inspired by affection for the social,
geographical and technical reality of our country. Although
they make a greater impact, they are still merely replicas of the
hybrid cosmopolitan architecture which is monotonously
produced all over the world. It is anti-realist and theatrical and
more than anything else it is like the commercial architecture of
the United States, the worst cullural source in the whole world.
"r;TQII"'" III till: rld:>tI';.M1 t:> ,~,
This architecture and the al-ts integrated with it are the natural
fruil of the capitalist tree.
10. When compared with the cosmopolitan trend I have just
mentioned, the nationalist trend in Mexican architecture, which
we could call indigenous, is preferable because theoretically it
wishes to build (or says that it wishes to build) a reaiiJlic M~xican
architecture. However it loses itself in superficial, decorative
solutions which leave the underlying cosmopolitan struoures
virtually intact. These architects would lik.e to believe that a
foreigner becomes naturalised when he wears native dress-a
t)'Pica1ly tourist coslUme.
Because tbis type of architecture is based on anti-realist
ideologies it is contrary to any important degree of plastic
integration. It is the work ofamateur revolutionaries, without a
truly realistic sense of political revolution. It is not the work of
revolutionary militants. It is only personal talem which makes
its plastic realism potentially superior to the lamentable work of
the architects and sculptors who built the monument to
Cuauhtemoc in the Paseo de 1ft Refonna, or those who built the
pyramidal monument to lhe Race. This is an architectural off-
shoot of formalism and anti -realism.
11. Nevertheless, in spile of the tack of originality of the
hybrid cosmopolitans and the false nationality of the
indigenous exponentsoffolk an, Mexico is the scene of the most
important effort in the world to integrate the arts. And although
anti-realism is the cause of many errors, we still have a head stan
over all the other countries in the world, even those considered
the most advanced in Europe. We can see the truth of this when
we observe the international panorama.
12. One of the greatest obstacles in the way of pla.stic
imegration in Mexico is the imbalance between mural painting
and architeaure. This exists on both a technical and an
ideological level. Independently ofour detailed differences, our
realistic pictorial objectives and our attempts to put them into
practice are thwarted by the anti-realism of the architecture
which is to be their organic base. The work of Carlos Merida, for
instance, would undeniably look right on the interior and
exterior walls of these buildings, because of his hybrid style and
142 Art and Revolution
reaClionary polilics. For the same reasons, the work of realistic
painters would not.
15. Although this imbalance is detrimental to plastic
imegration, it is quite possible to produce pictures that will
coordinate with given types of architecmre, up to a point. Proof
of Lhis can be found in all !.he murals painted on the walls of
colonial buildings, and others built during lhe oligarchic Calles
regime, bOlh of which are tOlally alien in form and style LO OUf
painting. And of course, much pre-Renaissance painting ....'as
done. on the walls of Roman and Romanic temples, and
Renaissance pictures wefe painted on the walls ofByz.a.ntine and
Gothic churches.
OUf great objective is to integrate realistic painting and
sculpture with realistic architecture. And if this is not possible,
we must paint realistic pictures withoUlabandoning the struggle
for plastic integration.
14. And when I talk of realistic painting being an integral
part of realistic architecture, I do not mean naturalism, nor
primitive descriptive painting, which are both anti~realistic;these
may however sometimes be unavoidable and therefore fulfil
an ideological purpose which cannot and must not be post-
poned.
In any case, realistic architecture as part 01 a realistic artistic
whole, should have its own theme and style, not the primitive
styles of today with their use of mosaic in the pre-Christian and
Byzantine manner.
.15. Of course architecture can only be realistically integrated
With the plastic ans in a realistic political regime. A regime
~hich is governed by the needs of the country and the people,
J~st as the arts are governed by hjstory, geography and tech-
nique. A government which capitulates to the imperialists
cannot produce realistic architecture, nor can the arts be
integrated in the service of the people. Integrated art must be
public art in the widest sense of the term.
16: Ami-popular regimes foster spectacular, demagogic
pUbl.lc art, which is impractical and expensive. The regime of
Presl.dent Miguel Aleman fostered an oligarchic type of
architecture in the commercial Yankee panern, and this also
ReaNsm in the Plastic Arts 143
applied to some artists. If the Aleman political trend continues
to grow it will ruin our national culture to an extent which
cannot be imagined and we shall go back. 10 the type of culture
produced under Pomrio Diaz.
17· As you can see, there is an intimate connection between
political reality and realism in the integrated arts. Because of
this, the most imponanl achi~'ements of architectural
in.legraoon have always been state enterprises and in the future
WIll have to be the work. ofthe new state. Private architecture and
ime.gra.ted arts can only show us the general panorama of the
caPllaJlSt world; an architecture born of business speculalion is
govemed by !.he economic interests of its exploiters rather than
the needs of the people. '
If ourcounrry abandons its traditional role in the forefront of
the. Latin-American struggle against the imperiaJism of the
United States, the most immediate enemy of our economic and
cohu.ral development, then our plastic integration will be
nothlO~ but a ~oor fiction, a formalistic fa~de produced by
profeSSionals wah no feelings for humanity. Our cities will be
transfonned into little copies of Dallas or Houston in Texas.
The cultu:al roots of ou.r country which were first discovered by
the MexICan R~'oluuon and the international workers
movement, through our muralist movement, will once again be
buried.
18. No one with the slightest national political conscience
would deny that the cultural development of Guatemala will be
suppr~ssed ~Y the Stat~ Department's aggression against its
sovereignty, Just ~s MexIcan cultural development would have
been suppressed tfthe usurper General Victoria no Huerta had
stayed in power. ~ar Guatemala, for Mexico. for every
oppress.ed .country In th~ world, the political victory of the
people IS VItally necessary If they are to be able to rediscover the
sources of their national anistic creativity.
19· A popula~ regjm~ in Mexico, because of its very nature,
must lead to an IOtegratlon of the ans in terms orMexican social
and geographical reality, and abo in terms of an ever improving
technology. A government of this type would foster the
development of Mexican art for Mexico, realistic in the broadest
144 Art and Revolution

sense of the word, and as such il would have universal values.

Can any conscientious intellectual, in defence of his own rights
as a creative person, be neutral in the inevitable battle in politics
20
and aesthetics? The Salutary Presence of
Mexican Art in Paris
[Comments on an Iniele by Philippe Soupeutl, In a lecture delivered on
August 26th, 1954, at the Palace of Fine Ani, Melli(:o Cityl

In 1943, when I was director afthe Department afFine Aru in

the Ministry of Education. the poet Carlos Pellicer and the head
of the department of Plastic Arts, the painter Roberto
Montenegro, in collaborarion with the historian Salvador
Toscano, the expen Victor M. Reyes and orner members afthe
department, began to prepare for a Mexican an exhibition to be
shown first at home and then in Europe. We discussed the need
of our people, including bOth intellectuals and anim, lO find
their national cultural roots, to discover how our a.n is related to
pre- Hispanic an, colonial art and popular art.
We wanted to take the exhibition to Europe in order to find
out what the European critics thought of us. We began
preparing for the exhibition, but were stopped by bureaucratic
complications and changes of staff.
At that time <t943, 1944, 1945) what was the situation of
Mexican painting in the United States? This is an important
point in the development of our subject. Ana Brenner, Francis
Toor, Alma Reed, MacKinley Helm and many other writers and
art critics were giving our work much favourable publicity.
Mexican painting had been and still was extraordinarily
popular in the States, but nOt in Europe, There had already been
a very- important exhibition in the States, organised by MigUel
Covarrubias and entitled "Twenty Years ofMexican An". It had
been a great success. Jose Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera,
146 Art and RevOlution
Covarrubias himself, Luis Arenal, myself and others had
painted murals in lhe States, murals with our usual ideological
content.
American painters were also producing murals under our
inAuence. Roosevelt's government fostered the painting of
murals in many public places in the Stales, and there was some
discrimination against our painting, part.ial auacks which
worried us, as we found our work. being politically queried.
Nevertheless, we had very good publicity in the States, although
very litlle was known about us in Europe.
1 shall now speak about the exhibition which we sent to Paris
and (he very importaOi article which Philippe Soupauh wrote
about it.
As you may recall, OUT first contact with Europe was in the
XXV Biennale of Venice. Orozco, Rivera, Tama)'o and mpe1f
exhibited on that occasion; exhibition was by invitation only
and no other Mexican painters were invited to exhibit by the
organisers. My work received an important prize. the second in
economic importance. Each of us wok approximately thirty
pictures, and this gave a fairly wide panorama of contemporary
Mexican painting.
The Biennale "''3.S of enormous imponance to us. Our
exhibition caused a sensation and much comment by lhe critics,
although no one made any mention of the ideological charaCler
of our painting. All the newspapers. of every political tendenq',
almosl without exception, praised oUl'work. The Italian critics
spoke intelligently ofiu monumental qualities, its figurdtiveness
and its modern realism. The Trotskyists made a few political
attacks on us, mainly against myself. In fact, &I'eat liberality was
shown in aJlthe critical appreciations of our movement. I have
about ninety Italian press cuttings. The French were also full of
praise for our work. and Mexican painting in general. Many
agreed Ihat we had been the Teal smsation oj lhe grta1. tvtnl. As
could be expected, the profonnalists and the abstractionists
made no attempt to hide their preferences, and neilher did the
supponers of ngurative an and social realism. The weekly
magazine An published a vcr)' responsible article ;<tbout my
work. However, later on, when things had changed, so did its
MexicanArt in Paris 147
author. But on the whole it is fair to say that opinions were
honest and nm spoilt by seClarianism or preconceived ideas. In
Stockholm, london, Brussels and praClically all rhe European
capitals articles were written about c:>u.r. presence in Venice.
Why? Because at me time of the exh'~llIon a congr~ss or art
critics was also being held in Venice......Ilh representatives from
nearly every country in the world. These critics s~w ou~ wo~k,
formed their own opinions and ga"e our MexIcan plCtoTlal
movement magnincent international publicity.
In 1951 we again started to discuss the idea of ta~i~g an
exhibition of Mexican art to Europe. After all the publiCity we
had had the National Institute of Fine Ans \\'3.S receiving
invitatio~s to present an exhibition of Mexican an in museums
in Paris, Rome, Brussels, London, Amsterdam and Stockholm,
while some governments, for example Poland, also sent
invitations. It appeared at that time that.me ideological nature
of Mexican painting did nO( consu~ute an ?bsrade, to
international cultural exchange. The Nauonal InSbtllte ofFme
Am has extensive documentation which proves the importance
of our European exhibition.
At the beginning of 1952, a grave a.ttack against democracy
was perpetrated in Mexico in the P.alace of~ine Arts; a political
event which I am bound to mention here Ir I am to present a
trUe and complete account of my pan in this affair. Until then,
the ideology of the Mexican painters belonging to the
comemporary Mexican an movement had been respected.
There had been no interference with our ideology and we were
never even asked to submit previous sketches of our wall
paintings. In that sense, Mexico was an.example to the wo.r1d.
Then the mural which Rivera had palO ted for the MexICan
exhibition in Paris and which wascalled "Nightmare ofwar and
dream of peace", and which had been ordered by the Mexican
Government and was already half paid rOf, was cut from its
frame one night and stolen. We were given 10 u?dersr3.nd
unofficially that this had been the work of a secret pollee, which
maimained its own prisons and operated oUlside the control of
the government, and that their actio~ had not been un?ertaken
on government orders. This was a dIrect attack on rhe Ideology
 -
148 Art and Revolution
of the artist, and a warning that murals which did not respond to
a certain ideology would bedestroyed. We believed then, and we
still do. that this was not a Mexican idea. We declared: "II is our
sincere belief thaI this attitude was forced on the Mexican
government by foreign powers." Which foreign powers?
There was great artistic solidarity on this occasion; some of
the artistS, for instance Xavier GueTTt"ro and myself, withdrew
the work which had been commissioned by the Institute afFine
Arts specially for Lhe Exhibition, and eighty per cent ofM6xican
artists condemned what had happened. Funhennore, the
mutilation and confiscation of Rivera's peace painting
provoked world-wide reaction, an international scandal, and
the attention of the world was called to the ideologicaJ nature of
our work. the revolutionary content ofom- painting. Jt was both
said and wriuen that Mexican artists were nOI artists in the
common sense of the word, they were also cilizens who felt it was
their righl to express violent social opinions in their works of
an; they had earned the right to sa)' what they Ihoughl and thai
right should be respecled. Of course the reactionaries ....·ere
against us and said so.
The exhibition of Mexican art from pre·Columbian times 10
the present day was prcsemed at the Museum of Modem An in
Paris from May to June, 1952. It opened in a very tense political
atmosphere. The small Trotskyist groups in Paris were in (he
from ranks of the reactionaries and opened the attack. Andre
Breton and his band primed a leaflet against the Museum and
myself and handed it out to people inside the exhibition. It said
that my "hands were stained with blood". This was the
hypocritical bleth.er of intolerant surrealists.
At the same time, Benjamin Perel, a well-known Trotskyist
who had Jived with Trotsky in Mexico, published a whole page
in Ars·Speclacle, the Paris weekly, in which he called me "an
aJJlUJin wh.o slaim the Mexican Art Exhibition with blood by his very
preunce", and he called Rivera a "painter whose StaJinism has
caused him to degenerate". He did not comment on Orozco or
other .contemporary Mexican painters. His analysis was
peda.ntlc and full of false erudition about prehistoric and
popular art in Mexico. This was Iypical of the French critics.
Mexican Art in Paris 149
On the occasion of the xxv Biennale in Venice, this
magazine, ArJ-Sptclade, had published an article byJean Bouret.
its staff critic. in which he said that the greatest successes of tbe
Biennale had been the Belgians and the Mexicans. "Tbe
Mexican consignment had without a doubt been the revelation
of me Biennale. We expected an art which would be violent both
in fonn and colour, but we were far from realising that the
Mexicans had achieved such greatness and such nobility in the
power of their construction. Their flame. the flame of the four
artists. is the sign ofextraordinary confidence in the future ofart
in their country."
After the Breton-Peret campaign. a curious metamorphosis
occurred. What happened 10 Jean Bouret after the violent
political campaign against contemporary Mexican painting?
He kept absolutely quiet abom our Paris exhibition, although
"the flame" of the four painters had produced many more
paintings than were seen in Venice. How to explain this sudden
change? Had the sinister hand of Yankee imperiaJism been at
work? What had happened was that the magazine had changed
hands; certain people from a certain country had bought it and
naturally its policy had changed.
In Paris there was a political struggle around our exhibition.
As was to be ex.pecled we were applauded by the left, the
revolutionaries and the progressives. and anacked by the
reactionaries. It is only fair to point out thai the reactionaries
attacked us mainly from a political point of view, and made no
attempt to deny the plastic values of our work and its hislorical
importance. To be absolutely sincere. I should also say that the
praise we received from the left was a little tOO emphatic, not
well argued, and did nOt analyse the real historical importance
of our movement. It was applause, passionale, fervent applause.
but nothing else. They did not define the meaning of our
movement, nor its antithesis to the School of Paris. If by any
chance they did, they were not very clear about it.
What was there in our exhibition which could so disgust t.he
right-wing reactionaries? Rivera's political picture was not
exhibited, since after it was found the government of Mexico,
under President Miguel Aleman, had not wished it to be sent to

Paris. 0 ther political pictures painted by Xavier Guerrero,
myselfand others, had also not been sent. What was the political
content of the exhibition, then? Merely that some of the
painters were members of the Mexican Communist Party,
others were friends of the Party and most of the artists were
progressives. This was the only political content of the
exhibition, but it greatly influenced the European critics and
newspapermen. They considered every picture with a
humanistic content to be communist; to paint unhappy .....omen
with starving children was subversive and politically revolu-
tionary; to paint Indians, Mexican Indians, who form the
greater part of our population, was also a communist act of
subversion. The popular memes, the manifestations ofour folk
art, .....ere interpreted by mese critics and newspapermen as
revealing the revolutionary thoughts of communists.
The comments made about our exhibition were typical of the
whole situation of European culture. In the t.....o years from 1950
to 1952, from the Venice Biennale to our Paris Exhibition, there
had been a profound change. Our presence in me Biennale had
moved the critics to talk of our enormous humanitarian feeling
of the profoundly national character of our work; they
emphasised that our painting bad its own racial and
geographical characteristics and was neither anodyne nor
amorphous. But in Paris there was an extraordinary change.
In September 1951l', the Mexican Exhibition opened in
SlOckholm. Many people came from allover Scandinavia. Our
ambassador in Stockholm, Professor Gilberto Basques, with
surprising efficiency for a diplomat, handed OUI extensive
information about the exhibition which was published in many
Mexican papers. h is only fair to recognise that the~e
publications show that Scandinavia had not been so contaml'
oated by the snobbish alfectationsofthe School ofParis, and their
art critics were less biased and sectarian. Perhaps the State
department had had no time to do its work there, because the
Swedes and other Scandinavians showed themselves much more
independent in their opinions.
In March and April, 1953, our exhibition was presented in
London at the Tate Gallery, and the result was similar 10
IVltfJ(I(;t:lfI Mol L Ifl t"'t:lII:' '0 ,
Stockholm. There was passionate discussion, almost a fight; but
reactionary hysteria did not reach the French level by a long
way. As in Italy, they all praised the exhibitio!l as a whole, and
spoke most favourably about the works they had liked most.
How to explain this equanimity? Was it that the intrinsic value
of the work was greater than its political content? Perhaps this is
true, as the FBI also operates in England.
While we were in London, the Metropolitan Museum of New
York asked us to send the exhibition to them. This was natural.
We had exhibited in Venice, Paris, Stockholm, and London; we
were invited to Rome and other capitals; it \.;as logical for New
York to invite uS as well. The Mexican Government began to
discuss this invitation with the Americans, and I know they were
agreeable to sending it. But the Metropolitan Museum .(~en
said: "We want the exhibition, but we don't want the pohuca1
contemporary pictures. We only want the pre· Hispanic,
colonial and popular art." The Director of the Natio~al
Institute afFine Arts, the writer Andres Iduarte, answered WIth
dignity: "Everything or nothing." This was one of the most
Aagrant acts of cultural political discrimination that we have
seen. The exhibition did not go to ew York, because the
American panorama had changed considerably. We \"ere no
longer the favourite child of the American critics, we were no
longer the discoverers or a new world in the field of the plaslic
arts; we were no longer {he healthiest, most youthful and most
powel-rul force in the art world. Our work. could no I?nger be
shown in the Metropolitan Museum. We recen'ed no
explanations, but without a doubt the culprit was the American
State Depanmem which had stirred up the reactionary forces or
Europe against the dangerous influence of our social art.
In 1954-, we brought our Exhibition of Mexican Art back to
Mexico. It had alW""dys been the intention of both organisers
and anius that it should finaUy go on sho\\' in Mexico, so that
Mexicans could see what the Europeans had seen and form their
L-wn conclusions about all the favourable and unfavourable
criticism. International criticism is always important and in this
case it would give us a means of evalualing our own
contribution and the magnitude of our effort.
152 Art and Revolution
Unfonunately-and J say this very sincerely-many mistakes
\\'ere made in bringing this exhibition back [0 Mexico. and the
first one was lO dismiss Fernando Gamboa who had been so
efficiendy in charge ofour European tour. He had acquired a lot
of exper-ience and there was no solid reason for dispensing wilh
his services. There was no proper appraisal of the situation, it
was just one of those bureaucratic games which are typical of
Mexican life, and where the art field is subject to the same lind
of manipulations as the town hall: tbe new boss takes the badge
away from the old police chiefs friend and gives it to his own
friend.
At the beginning of 1954, after a long chain of complications
and the possibility of political repercussions had been
eliminated, the Mexican Art Exhibition opened in Mexico City.
But it was no longer the same exhibition which had travelled to
Paris, Stockholm and London; it did not even include all the
pictures which had been senl to the Venice Biennale. Most ofthe
pieces which belonged to museums and private collections in
the States had been returned. As a consequence of this, the
worlts of Orozco. Rivera. Tamayo and m)'Self had been greatly
reduced. Why had the American works been returned? We all
knew that the American museums were in no hurry to receive
Iheir pictures back. because they were not going to display them.
The pieces belonging to the Museum of Modem Art of New
York, and thai of Philadelphia, could surely have been retained.
The Mexican people were certainly nOl able to see whal the
Europeans had seen of the work of Rivera. Tamayo, Orozco and
mpeJf.
More paintings of the newer generation of painters were
brought in, bUI nOl in the right proportions. The work of the
young painlers should have been shown in greater quantity.
This both could and should have been done in Mexico. And if
this would have made the Exhibition too big for the Palace of
Fine Arts it could have been housed in several buildings. There
was no proper calalogue, the official publicity was weak and
almost non-existent. Some of the journalisls. for example
Margarita Ponce of Excelsior, criticised the absence of publicity.
And so in Mexico this exhibition did nOL enjoy the popular
Mexican Art in Paris 153
success il had enjoyed in Europe. it did not reach such a wide
public. There was marvellous pre· Hispanic art, with some ofthe
most eXlraordinary sculptures ever seen; there was our colonial
art, without a doubt the best in latin America; there was a
collection of popular art the equal of which it would have been
hard to find in anycoumry in the world, and there was the young
an movement, healthy, perhaps not yet fully developed. but
with a fast growing importance.
Then why was il so ignored? Where were the an critics? litLie
press notices, mostly very insubstantial, a few repons--bul
where were the critical studies which an exhibition like this
deserved? It was the ideal opportunity LO answer many
fundamental questions. What is Mexican painting? Why has it
been so violemly attacked and at the same time so violendy
defended? Why has il moved the whole world? What is
happening to chis pailHing? It was the moment to express
honest and courageous opinions, it was an opportunity for the
supponers of the School of Paris to say: "Mexican painting is
totally valueless"; they could have said it quite frankly and
direcdy and explained their point of view to the public in shorl
articles. Why did they not cake advantage of this occasion 10 do
so and to tell the public that the-,' thought our movement was
provincial and still had a lot to learn from Europe. and nothing
to teach il? And why did none of those who defend ourpainting
produce a serious study of it? Some did make a stan-but they
took tOO long.
Both the people and the artists of Mexico are waiting for a
broad. serious critical review of this exhibition. The poel Carlos
Pellicer has come to save the situation, but it may be too late.
However. we must congratulate him, he has understood that
our painting mus! be discussed, so that we can understand its
various rrends and the tendencies of its artisLS. What is the
relationship between this painting and the Mexican revolution?
What is its connection with the social movement of our country
today? What is the relationship between Mexican painting and
the philosophical and political thoughts which agi tate the world
today? A lot of these questions could have been clarified. And so
I want to be very frank today, and give you my point of view in
154 Art and Revolution
detail, without pulling my punches, without hiding behind an
insincere. pseudo-democratic liberalism. By hiding and nOt
publishing all the European criticisms, whether favourable or
not, there was a boyeon. And this is why I think it is a good idea
to refer 10 an anicle by the French writer Philippe Soupauh,
whom r know personally and who belonged for a time to the
Surrealist movement. I was very surprised when I read his
article, and it was Dr. Alvar Carillo Gil who said to me: "In a
very expensive magazine, which costs twelve dollars a copy.
there is an article by Philippe Soupault which I found very
interesting...
The odd fact is that the magazine in question is one which
deals principally with non-figurative European an. and is very
much in favour of Surrealism; it appears every six months. The
article by Philippe Soupault, which deals with the contrast
between the contemporary Mexican School and the School of
Paris appeared in a magazine whjch is published for an elite(and
perhaps for an imellecrually and culrurally degraded elite).
But since we would like Soupault's article to reach millions
of people we shall prim a popular edition in France of
many thousands of copies so that it can reach as many French·
men.
It is not that Soupault says anything in his article which has
no! been said before, because many have said the same thing.
What is important in his case is that he is a neutral author, who
cannOt be considered a man of the left, or a pro-communist;
this is evident from the cut of his article and his mystical analysis
of pre-Hispanic art. In spite of this it is the most categorical
article to come OUt of France, the most courageous and clear,
and very useful to us, because he shows that there is a Mexican
movement ofpainting and that the internal struggle between the
members of that movement is only to find out "who is mos! able
to serve the cause of the people".
Did it occur to Soupault to tell us to stop being so provincial,
like all the Mexican supporters of the School of Paris do? And
do those Mexican critics think we could SlOp being provincial?
Would they like us to imitate the School of Paris, or do as artistS
did in Ihe time ofPorfirio Diaz, when Mexican culture had no
MexicanArt in Paris 155
national identity and our nationaliry and race made no
contribution to world culture? Philippe Soupault confinns that
our movement is more important than any other in Europe at
the moment; that in Europe, art is mean and private, while our
art is public and monumental; that compared with the
geometrical, decorative dehumanisation of the School of Paris
our movement reaffinns for the benefit of Mexico and all other
countries subjected to capitalism, a figurative art which is
realistic and frankly modern in intention. What Philippe
Soupault unfortunately does nOf know is !hat our movement
has already passed into its second historical stage, characterised
by murals on exterior walls, and active architeoonic surfaces;
that our formal research is neither one-sided nor limited, but is
carried out in the field of integral art, which indudes all the
creative problems to be found in the area of the plas.ti~ arts. .
Soupault aho tells us that while the School of Pans IS stuck. ~n
its inevitable historical impasse, our movement has a splendid
future before it, a road which it has hardly begun to traverse,
and our experience will be the salvation of international
paiming in the near future. Soupault places great importance on
the collective effort. But haven't the critics favourable to the
School of Paris been saying that there is no collective
movement? As a proof of the fact that our movement does not
exist, they cite the tremendous differences betwe~n the s~les of
Orozco and Rivera and myself and the other MeXICan palmers?
They also say that we have no ideological ~niry, th~t there are
comradinions among us. When they say thiS they thmk. [hey are
denying the existence of our movement, a movemem which is
the cuhural expression of the Mexican revolution, a culture
based on our wonderful pre-Hispanic traditions, and our
marvellous colonial and popular art. But this movement would
not have arisen without the Mexican revolution. And the proof
of this is that in other Latin American countries with similar pre·
Hispanic, colonial and popular art traditions, JUSl as wonderful
as our own, no movemem has arisen. This is the case of Pel-u,
Ecuador and Colombia. Why did not comemp<?rary art
movement appear in those countries? Because they dId nO[ go
through a politcal upheaval as Mexico did, because there has
156 Art and Revolution
been no national shake-up to awaken in their artists a desire to
find national and racial expression.
Soupault speaks of "conditions adequate lO the developmem
of an"; these conditions were found in the Mexican revolution
and to b.e frank, m~ny of us. found them by jOining (h~
Communist Par£)'; thiS gave us mternational semimenr.s which
we might not have had. and put us in the vanguard of the an
movement juSt as it pUI us in the vanguard of the working class
and the proletarian masses. The ideology of lhe bourgeois.
democratic Mexican Revolution alone, would have led us into
chauvinistic, pseudo-nationalistic, folkloric ideological
confusion typical of those intellectuals who remain faithful to
!.he platform of me petty bourgeoisie and the new oligarchy.
No, those who say there is no comemporary Mexican an
movement are wrong. there is ruch a movement and its paimers
have much in common, Some people have desened our
movement and moved away from its fundamemal
characteristics. What are these characteristics? Does Philippe
Soupault mention them in his article? Inas much as he refers to
the monum~mal, heroic characteristics of mural painting, he
does; he POints out thar our movemem is based on the mural
and the print and that we reject art which is produced forprivate
galleries. Soupauh has begun to understand, and other
intelligent people in Paris wiJI eventually understand. chat an
an movement oriented exclusively towards gallery art, can only
lead to the errors of abstract art, the limitations of fonnalism,
the absurdity of pure an and to decadence and the death of
powerful human expression.
The serious problem which all of us have before us is State
~rr, At all periods of history, State Art has been of supreme
Imponance, and Soupault understands this when he speaks of
the need for great. monumental, heroic an; an that is "larger
than man"; an for the masses. Reading between the lines, we
can see thal Paris is beginning to criticise the one·sidedness of
cOlllemporary, European painting. Our movement is differem,
we search for an integraTed complete an, with all its attributes.
We shall not achieve it yet, nor in the near furure; we are the
primitives ofa new period in which art will nOl be limited to one
MexicanArt in Paris 157
part or facet of a problem, to the first three or four letters of the
artistic alphabet, but to the whole alphabet, an alphabet greatly
expanded by the new letters we shall add to it.
We know that impressionism was based exclusively on the
vibration of light, that fauvism concentrated on colour,
surrealism on the unconscious, futurism fundamentally on
movement, and expressionism on emotions. But each of these
elements are pans of art which should not be amputated and
separated from the whole. How can you base a whole cultural
movemem on the problem of light or the problem of
movement? Did Cubism do anything but cultivate a one-sided
aspect of the strucrure of fonn, in a way which was extremely
interesting but really nothing more than an exercise. an
unfinished exercise? We mUSl understand that all con-
temporary art is incomplete and thus inferior to the an of me
great periods. Why do the paimen ofthe School of Paris despise
Renaissance painting? Not long ago. my friend and political
comrade, remand Leger, said to me: "Italian painting is only
good from Giono backwards. The rest is rubbisb." What an
error! From Soupault's article it appears that cultural circles in
Europe are beginning to understand that one of the most
important contributions of our movemem is that it will connect
an once again with the most valuable elements of the halian
Renaissance. which have been systematically underestimated by
the so-called painters of the vanguard in the western world, on
account of the taste for primitive and archaic an which is
characteristic of their aesthetic perception. We are vindicating to
the world the transcendence and importance ofche Renaissance.
It is an absurdity to say that only the work of Ciono and his
predecessors was good. What about Uce1l0, Masaccio,
Michelangelo and the Venetians? They all made important
COntributions and enriched art; they did not limit themselves to
a single facet or a specific problem, they included every aspect.
What does Soupault repeat from the other important French
critics who understand the importance of our movement? That
we are academic and old fashioned because we persist in
figurative art, in an art which does not try to 'erase the image of
man and his surroundings? That we are academics because we
158 Art and Revolution
vindicate the human figure which the AbstraclS have excluded?
People who understand this subject, k.now that from the time of
Oclilon Redon there was talle. in France of "art for art's salc.e", of
pure an, which would totally eliminate from art the image of
bolh man and things. They said: "In order to express emotions,
there is no need for man to appear; we must exclude him." This
was the beginning ofan an which \\'3.5 purely geomeu;cal, a play
offonns and colours, a Simple organisation of shades; anything
that might explain man's existence and his problems was
excluded. It was logical thal they next declared: "An has no
connection Wilh social problems." Everyone remembers the
declarations of Carlos Marida against committed art, an with a
purpose. I would like to ask, when has art not been committed?
Was Christian art not committed? The Christians expressed
their ideology in their art with enormous fervour, at a time when
there was a response to that fervour_ And was Greek mythology
not the fundamental subjecl matter of all the great artists and
sculptors of Greece? There is a lot of speculation lodayabout
what people call the abstraCi forms of pre-Hispanic an in
Mexico. There is nothing abstraci anywhere in Meso-American
an. The ancient Mexicans used their an 10 create a specific
language, hieroglyphics. What we today see as abstract forms
were letters for them,leuers with a brilliant plastic quality, but
they were letters, slogans, prayers, historical facts. scientific
explanations. There is nOl a single thing in the whole of pre·
Hispanic painting and sculpture either in Mexico or the whole
of America. which is exclusively decorative or purely abstract.
Many artists of today, borrow dements from p~-HispaItic arts;
but they only take the shell,lheycannot take the kernel. and they
forget that the shell was the result of the kernel, i.e. of the
ideological function which art had at that time.
We are in favour of figurative art and we shall fight against
those who wish to withdraw from the figuralive trend in
Mexican art. What right have they to snatch away from us our
need to depict our people, ro produce the images of our history.
to express the colour and thoughts of the members of our race?
Those we fight against say that we are trying to impose a
doctrine; but that is not true, we are not trying to impojt
Mexican Art in Paris 159
an),thing. We are defending what we think it is right co defend.
The Mexican pawling .....-e are defending is being defended all
over the world by many intellectuals and also by work.ers and
peasanlS. by men of the people. In many parts of me world there
is applause for the return to a human an which does not despise
the human form; while here a group of cultural playboys say ~'e
are taking the wrong direction, that weare miserable provincials
and rustics. They are wrong. they are the provincial rustics who
merely reRect the opinion of others, whose mentality is still
colonial. who do nOt feel the urge to make theil- own
contribulion to the contemporary world as a people and as a
nation. Even if all we had was this urge. it would be important.
because il would mean that we were on the right road and that
some day we would be able to produce an authentic national
expressIon.
We believe in figurative an and we know that figurative art
and realism go together. BUI what is figurative an? Is il JUSt a
reproduction of Ule human figure and other objeCls? Or does it
have anOther meaning of perfection for us today, because it
resumes all the historical contributions made towards realism?
We do not say lhal we should not learn from Europe, We say
thal we should nOt learn from those who are degrading and
disOI-ieming Europe's important an. How can we nOI learn
from Giotto. Ucello and Masaccio? How can we stop learning
from the Venetians and all the great french masters? What we
are doing this to vindicate a tradition which belongs to us all,
and those in france who are conscious of this are doing the
same.
We want to produce a more realistic realism; but I must make
some points clear. It is often said that the members of the
Mexican an movement argue about fundamental differences in
the mailer of an. This is untrue, bea.use we agree on Ihe
fundamentals. We argue about the best way 10 serve the people.
and in discussing the best way to a new realism we bear in mind
the function ofour art. This is the gist of the arguments between
Orozco and Rivera and between Rivera and myself, and lhe
arguments we have with the painters of the second generation
who are still with us. Our discussions aim at petfecting realism
 160 Art and Revolution
and achieving greater eloquence in our an which depicls man
and the objects and landscape of the earth.
But we are agreed on the fundamental pointS that OUf an
must be limited to the mural and the print. because if we begin
to produce an for the galleries, for me private market, we shall
find ourselves in the same boat as those other countries where an
has become abstract. puerile, a bluff, a formal lie, a fraud and a
publicity trick. We wiU not take !.hat road, we are united on the
fundamentals today more than ever, and we shall fight against
those who move away, either partially or totally, from the
figurative and realistic tendency of Mexican art and let want to
be considered as an integral pan of the Mexican an movement.
The Mex.ican art movement is not necessarily an produced by
Mexicans inside oroulSide ofMexico. The art of the Mexican art
movement is art which sprung from a nationaJ impulse of
internalional, historical importance, an art which offers the
world its own local discoveries whenever they are of
intemational interest and utility. II would be extremely
ingenuous or malevolent to qualify as Mexican an anything
which merely uses supposedly locaJ or native e1emems to clothe
the structure or body of an imported trend.
Philippe Soupauh defends our movement, and he defends
even what he calls its gigantism. In Europe it is in bad taste to
paint a figure that is larger than life. Many critics forget that we
are mainly mural paimers, and they find it difficult to realise that
some 9f our ""orks are studies for murals. Even here we have
sometimes had arguments. Some of the comrades ask why I call
something which is really an easel painting a study for a mural,
and although they might be thought right, it is not so because
the scale of these works does not correspond to an easel
painting. they are not works to be hung on small walls, in rooms
with low ceilings and illumination which is right for small
pictures. Most of the work of our group is of a mural charaCler.
There is very little sensuousness in our work. which is perhaps
why the Europeans find it hard and bitter, and sometimes weak
in craftsmanship. The fact is that we have nOt concentrated on
the refinements and sublleties of the easel painting because
t ~-
Mexican Art in Paris 161
almost all of us paint pictures on a large scale; this is one of the
mings that have been criticised in Europe.
Soupault and many other European c...,"itics, not all of them
revolutionaries, recognise that one of me positivecharaCleristics
of our work is its social purpose. Would it be possible for us to
abandon that position? Can you imagine what sort of an
impression we would make if all we did was to mess about with
lillie tricks like a group ofsnobs fed bya dt>generateor primitive
bourgeoisie, in a country like ours, a country in foonation, with
an enormous proportion of illiterates, where the general level of
culture is undeniably very low and where poverty reigns? at
even our millionaires, with their iII-gouen riches, are interested
in that type ofart. The truth is that in Mexico we either paint for
the people from the platform of a progressive State, or from !.he
underground against a power which has capitulated, or we do
not paint for anybody.
I welcome the galleries, and am glad that there are SO many
and mat new ones are opening, although I think it is crazy to
open new ones. At this momem the economic position of aJl
artists, but particularly the young ones, is very bad, although
Mexico is one of the countries which has a proportionately
better an market than others. The proof of this is that at this
time you can find all kinds of painting exhibited in Mexico;
European painters, Spanish painters who live in Spain, Dutch
painters, painters who live and work in Pads, and Latin-
American painters, from Venezuela for example. The Paris
artists are selling pictures in Mexico, they are trying to find a new
mark.et because international conditions are terrible. What are
the possibilities of developing a market in Mexico? There is
already a private market, but this is not going to resolve the
economic problems of the Mexican anists; not only this, it is
also going to destroy the quality of their painting; it is going to
create groups of painters who will manufacture useless objects
and will detraer from the interest in mural painting and the
print. It will destroy the essence of our movement without
resolving the economic problems of our artists.
Ask. the gallery owners-a lot of whom are present
7
162 Art and Revolution
today-what theeconomicsituation is, and they will answer that
the situa(ion of the galleries is very bad. Go and speak to the
young painters and find out what their situation is. In Mexico, as
in the rest of the world, painters are having lO live by teaching
paiming, something which is, to a certain extent, useless. The
pedagogical method mey use destroys the master and does not
allow the pupil 10 develop at all. For the only real way to learn is
by being involved in the production of something logical,
something with a function. So it is not surprising mal in New
York the works ofAmerican and European painters are sold 10 a
...ery small elite, an elite which has no interest in iu own country
nor its own people, and lives on me profits it sucks from the
other coumries of the world.
American painters--and some of you here today know that
mis is true-mostly live on the an classes they are forced to give
because they cannOt sell their work..
With this panorama before us, what do mey suggest, these-
painters who favoul" abstract an over figurative an? We are no
longer discussing the value of the different techniques. we are
discussing the mark.et. Do they suggest that Mexico should
become a miniature New York? Do they suggest that we should
edit magazines here, like the French ones, which COSt lwelve
dollars? Should we do that in Mexico, for no one to read?
Everything we have done and are doing is implacably
auacked by people who prefer easel painting destined to adorn
the homes of the rich in a coumry of semi-barbarian rich; they
prefer an an without ideological content in a country where it is
fundamentally important to provide ideological education for
lhe people. This is whal they want. And perhaps we should also
adopt certain sexual habits, which are becoming common; and
we should adopt them because morals are intimately involved
with all of this.
The young painters should understand that in this battle, no
maller what happens, victOry is impossible. There are no
historical perspeclives in Mexico which permit us to suppose
that, in our actual economic system, an an fomented by the
hysreria of the wealthy classes for the most selfish of purposes
could ever flourish.
Mex;canArt;n Pads 163
Let us see what the situation is in the United States, which for a
loog time was our best market. In the past we were able to paint
murals in the States, but this is no longer so. No one of our
movement can paint a mural there, although others can, and .....e
shall soon see why.
For about the last fift~n years no American museums have
bought any Mexican painting. Some tourists who have bought
pictures in Mexico have donated them to museums, but the
museums themselves have bought nothing. The publicity in
favoUT of Mexican painting made by Ana Brenner, Francis Toar
and so many others has been silenced. Our an has been
completely sabotaged in the United Stales. This is the
consequence of political events. Perhaps many critics will still
speak. of our work, but they also will be affected by
McCanhyism. McCarthyism in me Metropolitan Museum
which asked for the exclusion of contemporary Mexican
painters, McCanhyism in the Carnegie Foundation which, for
its international exhibition, drew up a list of Mexican painters
which excluded all the artists with social tendencies. Pictures are
no longer painted ofJefferson, Lincoln or Payne; they no longer
paint those who gave them the progressive laws which are now
being destro}·ed. Now they paint cubes, spenres of men instead
of men, spectres of dogs and not dogs, and they withdraw from
their own problems, their own people and their own nationaliry
to become intel1eClually colonial, as we in the countries which
suffer their capitalist exploitation are economically and
politically colonial.
Of course a paimer with no ideology, with no resources, with
no will to fight, cannot defend himself, he loses his d irenion and
changes to another in the hope of economic salvation. All he
wants is enough to eat, and however indelicate you may think
this is, it is logically and realistically very imponant.
There is no doubt that the tremendous campaign against our
painting in the States is political, and we have documentary
proof. I l muSt be taken into account, though, that this campaign
comes at the p'-ecise moment when our painting is beginning to
make the imellectuals and people in Europe think. again. The
first evidence of this was an article in the Mexican magaz.ine
 164 Art and Revolution
NouedadtJ in which a friend of Mr. O'D\II.')'er, a Yankee journalist
called Henry English, wrOte a series of articles in which he
maintained that a stOp must be pUI to the activities of the
communist, revolutionary painters of Mexico: they must he
destroyed because they have great influence 'with the masses and
gl"eat prestige, because they paint revolutionary scenes on the
walls of public buildings. because they produce engravings with
left-wing subjeclS, because they are dangerous elements who
must be persecuted.
I said he was a friend of Mr. Q'D",,'}'er. because a note once
appeared in the UP! saying that Ambassador O'Dwyer was not
returning (0 Mexico Immediately because he was to attend the
christemng of the son of the famous wri(t'T Henry English. And
it would also be opponune to note hCTe the behaviour of Mrs.
O'Dwyer who, as people in Mexican diplomatic circles know,
ever)' time the name of an)' Mexican painter of the social
tendenc)'. whether rnurdlist or engravCT, was mentioned would
start shouting, mosl undiplomaticall)', againsl all Mexican
government officials, even the most important, who .....ere
favouring revolutionary art.
This was the beginning, bue how did it continue? Not only
were \~e given no more commissions to paint murals in the
States, neither were we invited to give lectures at their
universities, although in the past many of us had been made
honorary members; not only did they stop buying our piCtures
for their museums but from 1943 onwards they would not give
any of us entry penniLS. Now their Inquisition, the State
Depanmem, moves into our country. And they make use ofour
comrades in the field ofcullure,justas they do of the politicians.
Everything that is happening in the field of culture today is
serious and painful. The artist is not usually a cad; it is unusual
to find an artist who will not fight 10 defend his point of view and
his ideology; il is unusual to find an artist who will serve as an
enemy agent. But something lerrible is happening in Mexico,
something which COvers some of our old comrades wilh
dishonour.
A campaign is being waged against us in the Stales and it
utilises the words of our own colleagues, those who have
h
Mexican Art in Paris 165
seceded from our movement and unjustly accused us of being
monopolists, although they have seen how the groups and
teams of painters working on murals have gl"Own. These
coUeagues are allowing themselves to be used in a campaign
against us, and one of the worst examples is Rufino Tamayo. I
have in my pO$session some documents about the behaviour of
this artist, which would shame a police agent. Was this
innocence or conscious betrayal by an opportunist who is
anxious to receive the international publicity which the Yankees
can give him? In Exct/Jior of September 9th, 1951, a lener
appeared from his wife addressed to "me very esteemed editor",
in which she said: <'First letme say that this is not a letterwnuen
for publication but written to you, a great Mexican and
defender of our great couolf)'." Later on she adds: "It is
unnecessary to tell you the political affiliation of the Mexican
painters who are unleashing such a savage campaign against
Tamayo and all the other artists and critics who do not agree
with their party.... Thest: are all details which would nOt seem
to have anything to do with Me.xico, nevertheless they have had
great repercussion here, because this is a coumry where several
communist paimers of great renown enjoy official protection,
paradoxical though this may sound." Mrs. Tamayo, in her role
of informer, then denounced the writer MacGregor as a
member of the Communist Party. Was this leuer the act of a
wife, surreptitiously unfaithful to the ideology of her husband?
As we shall see later, it was certainly not.
In the New York TimtJ magazine, on October 18th, 1952, the
following appeared on a full page. with a large picture of the
artist: "Mexican counter.revolulionary, The artist Tamayo,
who is painting mural$ for the government in Mexico City,
boasts ofhaving obtained a resounding victory againsl the social
an school." Tamayo violentl), proclaimed himself an anti-
communist. Recently, in conversations wilh journalists, Tamyo
declared that he was an ami· imperialist, as much against red
imperialism as against green imperialism; a good abstract
painter, he invents colours for abstract imperialisms and gives
no further identification.
Carlos Merida has also spoken against our movement; but it
166 Art and Revolution
must be pointed out that there is a big difference between
Merida and Tamayo. Merida makes criticisms without
intending to provoke or betray. (Someone wrote the word
"informer" on the poster which announced this lenure; I
suppose that from now onwards we should call those people
"informers" who inform on what has already been informed.
Isn', it a Iitde bit ingenuous to inform thaI someone is a
communist, when everyone knows he is. when evel")'one has seen
him uphold his ideological beliefs openly and franldy?l Carlos
Merida is an abstract aniSl who sincereJybeliev~that is the right
road for an, and who does nalrcally know what our movement
is. He was one ofLhe founders ofourmavemenl, but he then left
it completely and dedared himself against it.
Some people maintain that we should be doing now what
Diego Rivera was doing when I first mer him in Paris in 1919.
and that our movement would be saved if we would paint the
abstract art which I also tried my hand at in my youthful years in
Paris. Theysaywe have madea grave mistake and that we should
go back and erase what we are doing now because it is absurd. tn
view of this, we should say to M. Soupault: "What a fool you are,
my friend! What fools they are, all those who have praised our
work and hope to see the resurgence ofa powerful movement all
over the world!"
But to go back to the New York Times and Tamayo's interview
with Flora Lewis. In the third paragraph, the painter declares:
"Strange as it may seem, our government (the Mexican
Government) has always supported these politically communist
artists, although we have never had a communistgovernmem."
The enemy of art with a social message, passionate supporter of the
"apolitical art" of the School of Paris, looks for help from
Washington. The support he gets at home from, as everyone
knows, "foreign guests", is not enough for him.
And finally, 1 pass over many other incidents because I do not
have the documents to hand-their time will come. Let us see
what the Los Angtlts Time says: "The Mexican artist Tamayo ...
militant enemy ofcommunism, recounts his fight with Siqueiros
over the position of the Reds." A few lines further'on, we find the
following: "In our country, the CommuniSt Parry is very small
Mexican Art in Paris 167
... but it has an influence on many things, among them my
colleagues Siqueiros and Diego Rivera. Rivera is not a member
of the parry at this moment, because he was thrown OUt ...
hO\~'ever, he follows the party line." As you can sec. the infonner
must do his job, that is 10 say he mUSl confirm what is already
known and inform on what may be unknown: Rivera is not a
member of the party, but he deserves to be attacked by you as
though he were.
Why do they attack. our movement in the States? What do they
wam? Do they only combat lhings wilh a politica.l meaning? If
there were no political content, '....auld it still be attacked?Today
the Americans are attacking everything with a humanistic
content (I refer to American capitalists, to the monopolists),
becaus~ the}' know that in dealing with humanity it is impossible
to aVOid, either direcrly or indirectly, social and political
problems. This is why they no longer commission any murals,
because. a mural cannot express vague ideas or be merely
decorauve. You mUJt say something in a mural, and they know
that the painter will inevitably put something of himself into
what he says.
Th~ fight against our movemem is pan oftheir general policy,
and .10 con.sequ~nce they gjve overwhelming suppon to the
MeXICan fonnallsts. The Yankee campaign against Mexican
paiming. social in comemand realist in form, goes even further:
the Unjversity of Los Angeles, no less. aCted on the decision of
~he Municipal Art Commission inJuly, 1954, and expelled from
ItS an gallery' the work of the "Bolshevist" Jose Clemente
Orozco. The Rector and professors of this educational body
were nor deceived by the reactionary declarations of our late
colleague. They know that the essence of his work is mOI'e
powerful than his words, and thal his work was, definitely and
IOtegrally, part of our pictorial movement, monumental,
figurative and with incisive social criticism, in spite of his
frequent nihilistic explosions.
. And while they. discriminate against the ""ork of Orozco, ~hey
give enormous Importance to the work of evel)' MeXICan
abstract painter who denies Mexican painting, just as they
welcome every Mexican citizen who denies the anti· imperialist
168 Art and Revolution
struggle which has been the backbone of Mexican history. Their
press provides the deserters with good publicity. OUT country is
becoming contaminated by this corruption, and this is a very
serious (hing. In Los Angeles they expel Orozco. as we have
seen, and in Mexico they suspend Andres Iduane and remove
him from the direction of the National Institute of Fine ArtS.
Who suspended Andres lduarre? Was he suspended from his
duties for not violating the constitution, for 09t forbidding a
secror of the Mexican peoplt= to express itself ideologically, and
for respecting the la..sl will of a great anist who had just died?
Why was he suspended because he kept the law? If Andres
rduarte had said: ''In the Palace of Fine Ans, we cannot have the
coffin of a communisllying in state, however great the artist may
have been", tJw would have been breaking the law, There is no
article in the constitution which would have pennitted. him to do
that. In the vestibule of the Palace of Fine Arts the bodies of
many illustrious artists of evel)' ideology have lain in srate, and
when the deceased was a CathoUc, like the famous actress
Virginia Fabregas, a great crucifix was placed in front of the
coffin; when the dead or his mourners have exprhsed a wish to
have the funeral prayers read, this has been done. It would have
been seccarian to do otherwise, Why should Andres Iduane
ubject to the lying in state of the body of Frida Kahlo, that great
Mexican paimer, and why should her coffin not have been
covered ,..ith the Rag of the pany to which she belonged? Frida
Kahlo had the right, both legal and moral, to have her coffin
cov("red with her parry's Rag, the more so since her parry is a
legal party, Fouror five days before she died, Exulsior published
an imen'iew with her, in which she said: "If I die, I ~-ant the
pany's Rag to cover my coffin," And if she wanted it, why nOt?
Then who suspended Andre5 Iduane? No good Mexican would
have don(" so; we Mexicans are not capable of doing a thing like
that on our own. We Mexicans have a characteristically strong
sense of national dignity; we have a national sense ofshame, No,
a Mexican would not have done that of his own free will, he
received the order from abroad and it wa~ pan of a general
campaign against Mexico. lduane's suspension is dosely
connected wiLh some recent negative aspects of governmelll. I
Mexican Art in Paris 169
do nor mean to sa}' that rhe government has retally surrendered
to Yankee imperialism. No, it would be a mistake to say that and
H would nor help us to defend ourselves. It is nor for us to
undermine our government, bur we musr point out who the
reactionary imperialist enemy is, We must say that we do not
approve of these things and that the Americans have no right to
give orders in our house, but only in their own,
We can see from this how American imperialism not only
combats our movement in its own country but also in OUTS; it
corrupts important painters like Tamayo and many olhers, and
turns them imo informers and servantS to their cause; and it
interferes in other things too.
A similar case is that of the grear composer, Carlos Chavez, to
whom Mexican music owes so much born as composer and
conductor. But Ihe pressure is so great, so persisrem, so cruel
and so inquiSitorial, and makes such cynical use of visas and
threatS to take away imponam sources of income, !.hat it makes
many lose rheir probity both as intellectuals and as citizens,
This is the case of Carlos Chavez, a man known for his energy
-sometimes excessive--a man of intellectual probity who
has been forced to recant, and has been forced to publish a
shameful jeremiad so that he will be admitted to the United
States, now the best artistic: market in the world. He has been
forced to stammer out an explanation, and say that he helped
everyone, both Siqueiros and Tamayo, both lhe communists
and the non-communists, which is equivalent 10 saying; I
helped your agents as well, my fine American gentlemen, not
only four enemies, In this jeremiad, which was published in all
the Mexican papers last August 16th, he was forced to join the
ranks of those who call the communists "traitOrs to their
country", because in part of his letter he says that [here is no
doubt that the communists owe allegiance to another power.
But, my friends, a traitor should nOl receive help, and if Chavez
knew we communists were traitors to our country he should not
have helped us, because he is a patriol.
Chavez musL understand how badly he has behaved, He
wrote: "The accusation of communism implies, lacitly or
explicitly, more or less direci subservience to a for"eign power,"
170 Art and Revolution
Carlos Chavez knows quite well th;r it is OUf social art which is
being attacked, our art which speaks direcdy to the people
without intennediaries, the an which Philippe Soupault praised
so highly. And Carlos Chavez knows welJ thai Mexican music,
his own music. developed in the warmth of our contemporary
an movement.
Tamayo and Chavez are not the only ones, unfortunately. The
painters Raul Anguiano and Carlos Orozco Romero. and me
archite<:t Alberto T. Arai, have been contaminated by the
political panic which the imperialists make use of to corrupt me
cultural sector of our cOllnn)'_ They also tOially denied any
communist militancy, quite rightly, since they are not and never
have been communistS. But they did it in obedience to tacit
demands and pUl nearly a hundred of their intellectual
colleagues in a very difficult position. "Ah, those who do not
reply are communists", said the paid servaOlS of lhe American
embassy, who compiled the list, who wanted the communists
identified so that they could be persecuted and who thought
every liberal was a communist.
This all goes to show how the Yankees have invaded our
cuhure and our art movement. You may be asking yourselves
why I speak. of all these problems during a lecture on art. And J
would ask you: "Can we separate these problems from art?"
Can anyone say to me: "Siqueiros, you can talk. of these
problems but leave the political aspect OUt of it." I would have
to answer that it would not be possible, because the war against
Mexican paiming on a national and international scale is a
political war beG-use of the very nature of Mexican painting.
Our movement must be defended on a political aesthetic basis,
both on formal grounds and ideological grounds. We must
wage a political battle. We must say to the Mexican government:
"You must have a cultural policy, JUSt as you have an agrarian
policy, a labour policy and a social security policy; )'our
ideologists speak of the Mexican revolution, so why do you
punish the most important cultural manifestation of that
revolution? Why do you help to destroy it? Why do you give
support to the machinations of lhe Yankee imperialists against
us?" The State must have a position and a doctrine. There is
Mexican Art in Paris 171
much talk nowadays of neutrality. But what kind of neutrality?
Neutrality towards those who defend the constitutional ex-
pression of Mex..ican art, and also towards those who attack it?
Is this k.ind of neutrality possible?
Our Mexican art movement, whose prestige in Europe is
rising, as can be seen from Philippe Soupault's article, is
eminently political, and could hardly be otherwise. because it is
a collective experience which has been fighting for the imerest5
of the people and of the nadon for the last thirty )·ears. Whether
we wam to or not. we must W"'dge a battle to defend it, this is the
only guaramee we have of its continuing development. The
State cannot rema.in neutral in this struggle, nor in any other,
nor can it be selective. Can the State remain equidistant between
the decadent formalisllrends of Paris and our own movemem?
or course, one should nOt forbid the decadem painter to paint,
nor put him in prison. But from the point of view of lts
pedagogical doctrine, and of education in the State schools of
Fine Art, the State must adopt a point of view, an ideological
position, a doctrine.
The struggle in the Mexican an movement runs parallel to
the agrarian struggle. If tomorrow everything popular and
progressi,·e. fruit of the Mexican Revolution, were to be
implacably crushed, the Mexican art movement would be
destroyed. IfMcCanhyism invades our country, a painter who
depicu certain subjects would be condemned to death as a
painter; his activity would be regarded as subversive and
treacherous. This is what the Yankees would like to do in
Mexico. They are nOt only corrupting our movement, not only
would they like to destroy it and persecute it in every possible
way; they are also persecuting and destroying everything in
other countries ilial may have been influenced by the Mexican
art movement, especially in Latin America. Let us take the case
of Brazil, where under the influence of the Mexican movement
the architea Oscar Niemeyer and the painters Portinari and
Cavalcanti, among others, began a muralist movement. It was
an important movemem, which its supporters considered an
offshoot of the Mexican movement, and said so both in speeches
and articles. But they were attacked, as we have been attacked,
 172 Art and Revolution
and now in Brazil as in most other Latin Amedcan countries
Mexican painting has loSL ground to European fOlmalism. All
the modem art museums in Brazil, born in San Pablo and Rio de
Janeiro, are in the hands ofpeople who think and behaveexactIy
like the directors of the Museum ofMoclern An in New York, or
the Museums of Modern Art in Europewh..ich are In the hands of
the fonnalists.
And )'et there are still people in Mexico who dare to call our
art "official art", The only official art in the occidental world at
this time is fonnaJism, which has become me new academic an.
All the direcwr'$ of Museums of Modern Art are enemies of
figurative art, of the pictorial image of man, and of lhe
landscapes of our countries; this is the bureaucratic attitude of
their direnors.
I have spoken in Brazil and I feel r must touch on an incident
which moves the whole world today: the suicide of President
Getulio Vargas. This is the most dramatic instance ofa man who
submitted to the Americans in the hope that he could
manipulate them and attain a series of democratic advantages
for his people. The day arrived. however, when he realised that
only the State Depanment would derive any advantage from the
alliance. He found his law on minimum wages held up in the
Chamber of Deputies and the Senate; he found the Brazilian
Parliament would not approve his laws regarding the
nationalisation of petroleum and me petroleum industry, his
law regarding parasitic capital was to be Stopped; the State
Department of the United States government fixed the price of
coffee and forced him to devaluate the Brazilian rorrency.
Getulio Vargas saiq all this in the letter he lefl; he said it quite
clearly; and it is an enormity that he killed himself because he
would not fulfil his role as an agent of imperialism. This is the
Story of Gelulio Vargas, but the same lhing will happen here
unless we modify our a!litude. The painters of the con-
temporary Mexican arl movement call the attention of the
public to this problem and we say: the Mexican people can only
reap disaster from our friendship wilh the great American
monopolies and the United States government; it will stifle our
national culture.
...
Mexican Art in Paris 173
The only way to save Ihe progress of our agrarian
programme, to maintain the advanta~es the workers have wo.n,
and to gain further advantages. to Widen the benefits of SOCIal
security, to make our country truly independent, is to fight. It is
nOt true that they are aU-powerful, it is not true that they ca.n do
eve')'thing they want to do, even order the suspension of a
director of the National Institute of Fine Arts over the
telephone. If we were organised they would not be able to do
thaI. The Mexican painters speaking from this platfonn relllhe
people: we must urgently organise a national league aga!nst
imperialism; an organisatio~ of patriots.. commum.sl~,
catholics, protestants and men without parry or Ideology. ThiS IS
the only way to prevent lhe surrendel' of our COUntry. There
must be a change in lhe correlation of forces; we cannot say to
the president: "Stop making conces~ions" unless we mobil.lse
and give our government support agamst the government which
demands the concessions. We must organise in every aspect of
our lives. both political and artistic. Every Mex.ican patriot who
today feels ashamed ofbeing Mexican; every one who blushes to
see men from another country, foreign politicians, making
decisions on our problems or laking absolute charge of mem;
we must unite to defend many things, and among them Mexican
painting. If all you are interested in is art, you must do it for
lhe sake of art; if you are interested in Mex.ican painting
independent of all political activity, you will n01 be able to halt
its destruction unless you defend it politically.
rfanyone sees these problems as exdush·e!y political, and has
no interest in aT understanding of aesthetics he must try to
understand from my 'A'ords tonight that imperialism has
penetrated the art world and is active there.
I would also like 1O say something about the present situation
of OUT art movement, which I should have said before but I
forgot. It is frequently said that our movement is decadem, this
is another of our enemy's slogans. They say it is in dea.dence
because Orozco is dead. Rivera is very old and Siqueiros is
getting on, while lhe others are allover forty. You can read this
slogan in all the American magazines which circulate in our
country (there are 200 American magazine to one Mexican, and
.5
.. ..................=
 -
174 Art and Revolution Mexican An in Paris 175
that one is pro-YankeeJ. Most of them are very superficial, but ideological school of MeXican art, .....e paimers of social realism,
the problem is that they are gradually dominating our thought call the auention or (he Mexican people to these problems in
and our (aSle. In this situation-f say-a second, very imponanl our national cultu,·e which are closely connected with our
stage of OUT Mexican art movement is emerging: the step from problems of national independence and autonomy.
interior mural painting to exterior mural painting. Neither We are defending the immediate imerests of everyone in
Philippe Soupault nor the orners know anything of this new Mexico who produces, works and creares; we defend peace and
slage. The Italian author and cinema producer, Cesare fight against all enemies of peace; we wish Mexico and all other
Zabauino, who visited OUf country. wrote a very good article nations to progress. This is \'\'hat Mexican painting is doing, and
about lhis. It is definitely a step forward. I would like 10 this is why we call on all artists and imellcctuals to join our
emphasise here that a movement in decadence whose founders movement, to defend what we have already achieved and to
have died and left no heirs could not make such a step. Only a allow us to continue.
vilal movement, fonned by young painters who are trying to
solve enonnous problems, could do this.
You all know that I have enormous differences of opinion
with many of the painters who are doing this work. You all know
what I think of the work ofJuan O'Gorman and Jose Chavez
Morado; bUI you must not tak.e my opinions to imply a denial of
the immense value of their effons and the magnitude of their
work. Our differences and our polemics der-i\'e from a different
concept of formal problems, but they art' doing important
work.
If our movement runs the risk of dying out, il is for other
reasons. For if it was dangerous to pajm political murals in
interiors you can imagine how much more dangerous they
would be on exteriors. We are defending our movement so (hat
it can progress in this second stage, and we shall defend it tooth
and nail.
Art exercises as much influence in the Mexican Slate today as
docs the polilical programme of the Revolution, and this musl
be clearly undemood. The only official art al the moment is
formalism and the fonnalistic speculation of those snobs who
support the School of Paris for commercial reasons. No one
should think I have used the occasion of an intelieclualleClUre
to drag in politics. I don't think anyone, in view of everything I
have jusl said, can ha\'e the leaSt doubt of the political nature of
the reactionary.imperialist offensive against our movement,
nor of the help this offensive receives from many intellectuals,
some of them palmers. We paimers who belong to lhe

21
Open Letter to the Painters,
Sculptors and Engravers of the
Soviet Union
tRead by SiquEnn)s when he was received by Ihe $ollie! Academy 01 An,
October 11lh. 19551
II was only rwenty dap ago that I "''Tote my "Open letter to the
young Polish painters", It was allheir request and this is whatl
said:
"It is impossible for me (0 analpc the work ofeach aoeofyou
afler a single visit (0 your Exhibirion at the Arsenal. The work of
l i t painters. 99 engra"ers and 45 sculptors cannot be judged
from isolated examples of their work, without running the risk
of great injustice and profound error. On this occasion, J will
limit myself 10 sa)'iog a few general ",orels on what I have set'll. II
is impossible ro judge the details, without first examining the
whole.
"I find evidence in your exhibition of a healthy reaction
against the academism which until recently predominated in
Poland. I refer to what I saw when I came here in November of
195 I: a naturalism, frankly commercial in. style, similar to the
realism of American advertising art at the beginning of tht'
century. But at the same lime I notice a manifest inclination
towards the Jorma/ism !if the SchooL flj Pan·s. This step in the
din~ctiOll ofan an inlimaldy created by an aniSl for the illlimacy
of a hypothetical buyer, subject LO the mercenary speculation of
Open Letter to Soviet Painters 177
the galleries (today regulated by New York) is not in
k.eeping-neither in coment, type or fonn-with these times of
social transformation in yOUT COUntry.
"But what I see in your work assures me that the day is not far
away when you wi.llfind the road to a new,totally mo<km, realistic
art, as modern as the situation demands. Your problem will not
be solved by work in a private laboratory. The great periods of
an history were mainly the fruit of collective convictions and
you are fortunate to possess a national faith which many people
in the world have not yet found."
What can I say to you, comrade artists of the Soviet Union,
also in the form of an open letter?
In the fim place J would say that I have followed. the
development of your work from the very beginning: I paid my
first visit to the Soviet Union in 19' 7. ten years after the triumph
of the October revolution, and J saw something·of }"OUf an. In
1951 I visited Warsaw and saw the General Exhibition of Soviet
Paiming which had just been shown at a festival in Berlin. A
month ago I visited the Exhibition of Soviet Paiming, again in
Warsaw. And here in the Soviet Union, since the end of
September. I have visited all the galleries ofcontemporary an in
Moscow and Leningrad and also the studios of many painters.
and r believe I have seen your most important monumental
works.
I know that y.our an fulhls a politICal function of a magnitude
unmatched in the history of the world. All your work is at the
service of a social movement which has opened a new era for
humanity, and you have the unlimited suPPOrt of the first
proletarian State. It is quite evident that with your painting,
sculpture, engraving, posten, illustrations, stage deSign, etc.,
you have made the back.ward Russia of the Tsars into a COUntry
which leads in agriculture, industry, science, education. spOrt,
in everything which makes men happy. There is no city great or
small, no village, no factOry, no railway station, recreational
centre, school. theatre, where you have not expressed socialist
ideology, and eulogised your great men and your heroes in
 -
178 Art and Revolution
work. of all sizes. Both in the public squares and on the walls and
iOlel"iors of hundreds of thousands of blocks of Aats you have
con,tributed to their ornamentation. You are repeating in a free
society what others did in the condition of slavery; public an.
Your art is an art of the slate, ideologically commined,
eloquently purpoSt':ful. and for mis reason realistic. It is a heroic
art, an epic 3rt. And this helps you (Q find technical solutions.
for example the varnished tiles you are manufacturing. or
course, there is Still a lot more to be done and this is what I
would like 10 say something aboul.
I have been a member of the Mexican Communist ParI)' since
19 24, and we communists never limit ourselves to the analysis of
p~s.it~ve facts; we examine every aspect of a problem, and
cntlClse each Other and ourselves. And this is whal I propose to
do with you.
. !n !"1ex.ico~ where our painting is partly financed by Ihe state,
It IS Ideologlcally committed, realistic and interested in new
techniques. We have been contaminated by Jarmalism which is
the natural product of bourgeois economy and submission to
im~erialism. Your own art has nOI been affected by this leprosy
whIch has degraded the art of the capitalist world; but your art
suffers from another form ofcOJmopolitanism:jormaliJtic(l(odnniJm
and muhanical rtalism. Between Frrnch formalism and lUadtmism,
we can find an e1emem of similarity: they both denationalise an
and make it impersonal. The formalists in the manner of me
School of Paris and the academicians in the manner of the
Academy of Rome are as alike as twO drops of water, whatever
their nationality. There is no difference between an Argentinian
fomlalisl and aJapanese formalist, nor between an academician
from Hungary and one from Guatemala. Theirs is a hybrid art
because their style and form are nOI the result ofa function, but
are put first, a priori.
Our contemporary Mexican painting contains fonnalist
elements and as a consequence of thai formalism it suffers from
primitivism, and archaeologism, which you of course do not;
but you !lave not ye.L learned to create something new from your
OW? national teachIng, you are still victims oftheparlipri stylism
which 1 am talking about, you are victims of the dead laws of
Open Letter to Soviet Painters 179
an international academy which arose at the end of the
Renaissance.
I am sure you will agree with me that reaJiJm cannot be a fixed
for:nula, an immutable law; the whole of the history of art,
which sbo\O,'s the development of increasingly realistic forms,
proves this. If we run quickly over the history of painting, from
cave paintings, through Antiquit)·, the Middle Ages and the
Renajssance, we shall find thatlhis is absolutely true. We might
agree with those who say that no work of an is superior 10
another work of art, and that therefore no period of an is
superior to any other period of an, but this is not 10 deny the
unimerrupted process ofever enriched forms in the direaion of
a realistic idiom ever richer, more civilised and more eloquent.
Every period of an which has not been stifled by immovable
formulas has striven ta make iuan mare real. RtaJ.iJm can lU1JeTbt
an]lhing but a means of CT~ation In corutanl progrm .
Our Mexican painting, considered as a whole, has forgotten
Lhis principle, because of its fomlal speculations in the field of
archaealogism, which lead to the dead end of indigmow
primitivum. This is so serious that it has caused many of our
masters to stagnate in their original styles, the "infantile" st)'les
of thirty years ago. (As you know, the Mexican contemporary
movement started in 19U.)
That you have forgotten this fact in the Soviet Union is evident
in the perpetuation ofold rtaliJtic JtyltJ which btlong to the immedialt
paJl, rather like the Ttalism f!1 Amtricall commercial advn-tuing at the
beginning oJlhe century; and I find this influence present also in the
work of the Polish painters and in those of the other popular
democracies. If we observe the process of your work over the
last thirty-eight years, we shall find that your formal language
has n.ot progressed at all, you have merely improved your
technlque. But you must not forget that it is precisely the
constant perfection of style in a limited, repetitious realistic area
of creation which has always led to decadence. The painters who
came immediately after the Renaissance were much more skilful
than their predecessors, but theiT work is infinitely inrerlor.
Raphael was formidable, but the RaphaeliSlS who came after
him were detestable--and [his is jusl one example.
180 Art and Revolution
It is certamly nOt [rue that tuery exaltalion of/oml iJjonnalistn,
b("Cause in that case we should nOt be able to understand any of
the great Venetian pa.imers. nor Michelangelo, £1 Greco, Goya,
Daumier, elc., or, in the case of Mexico, Orozco. Theforma/iJls
worship form for its own sake, in a purel}' plastic exercise. and
the true realisLS have always used Conn to achiroe greaLtr plQJti.c
r/oqutnlt, LO give greater eloquence to their subject; when all is
said and done. the realist speaks in a plastic idiom. Were it nOt
so, however true and beautiful the political coment ofoUTwork,
il would nevenheless be a poor artistic expression of which
everyone would soon tire.
A study of Ihe history of an will show us that art has always
lended towards realism, whileconstanlly perfecting its materials
and tools. If we look at the four cemuries ofgreat Italian an. it is
easy to see thaI (he artists ofeach period were never satisfied with
lhe materials and tools of their predecessors; on the contrary,
lhey were always searching passionately for ne\'>' processes. Their
progress was not only parallel [0 the development of science,
technique and industry, it was often ahead of them. They
perfected tempera and oils, were always finding new and better
pigments and-why should we not say so?-broadening the
range of Iheir professional "trids" so as to perfect lheir work.
In Mexico we have had people who did the same thing and
olhers who rtsolutely opposed them, and this is the reason Ihat
much of our paiming uses age-old lechniques, which renders it
less politically eloquent. Paiming, like all the plastic arts, is
material and physical, and must therefore express itself in terms
of its vehicle. In your case, Soviet comrades, it is even more
serious, because none of you are interested in finding new
material techniques, although you have a Slate more able than
any other which has ever existed to provide you with the effective
and moral means to achieve this lransformalion.
While all Ihe great painters, at every period of history.
systematically enriched the principles of composhion and
perspective, the painters of the School of Paris have not only not
contributed anything in this sense but they have also losl all the
discoveries of the previous twenty centuries. In our
contemporal)' Mexican mO'.!emenr, although we were
]
Open Letter to Soviet Painters 181
syslematically opposed by those who clung to traditional
fonnulae, we have tried to lind solutions to this problem, as can
be seen in much of our work. Soviet paimers, on me Olher hand,
have remained dominated by the methods of composition and
perspective used by academics all over the world. And this bas
happened in the only country in the world where science has
been placed at the service of the people and could give them
enormous help.
No, neither thejOnm c!frtaiiJm ncr iJJ mtJltrial mtans art JtiUic. h
would be absurd to think that lhe masters of the pasl knew all
there was to know about realism (they might have thoughl the
same of their immediale predecessors). and it would be equally
ridiculous to think that materials and tools discovered
thousands ofyears ago are the last word.
Apart from the painting produced by the School of Paris (me
greatesl fiClion in the bourgeois world of culture, because this
!)'Pe of an suppressed public an, denied ideological art and
excluded the image of man and his environment, in favour of
pJtudo-lwtTtarian gtomttric j()TmJ), there are only twO important
an expressions in the world loday: the Mexican experience,
IOday operating under increasingly adverse conditions, and the
Soviet experience, operating under increasingly favourable
conditions. There has recently been a collective move in the
righl direction in the popular democracies and in Italy and
France, bUI this is still very new.
These twO tendencies, Ihrough criticism and self-criticism,
could help each other to eliminate their negalive aspects and
strengthen their positive ones.
Mexico has a great tradition of paiming and an anistically
gifted people; but Soviet painters are no less richly endowed in
this respect, their tradition is magnificent and their painters very
capable. Soviet painters have a professional discipline which we
lack and a faculty for expressing psychological phenomena
which, in my opinion, is unequalled in the whole world. They
are producing really monumental art, their art is intimately
integrated wilh their architecture, but Lhey must shake off the
rOuli71tJonn5 which are tying them down.
These words should be taken as the opinion of a comrade
182 Art and Revolution
with some experience in both politics and art. A comrade who
has seen the Hermilage Museum grow from fifryrooms in 19i7
to the three hundred or more which it has today and sees this as
the symbol of the scale of growth in every walk of Soviet life.
22
Plastic Arts and Revolution in
Latin America. in the light of the
experience of contemporary
Mexican painting
(E>o:tracts from a JeClure delivered on January 9th, 1960. in the CO<1cert
Hall of the Central Univetsltyof Caracas. VenellJel •. The transcription of
Ihe lape of this lecture, was edited by Editores y Dislribuidores: Librerill
Pensamlento Vivo, CA. lind with iI few corrections made by Siqueiros
himself was published In his book The Story of • Trap. Who Ire the
TrBI~o,sl My Answer. Ediciones de Arte Publico. MeXICO. 1960)

I am sure you have all heard of Diego Rivera's conflict with the
Hotel del Prado. He was commissioned to paint a mural in this
lOurisl.cenrre, and was asked to paim somethingconneeted with
the Alameda Central of Mexico City. Perhaps the people who
commissioned the painting thought that Rivera would paint
them an abstract Alameda, or perhaps JUSt leafy trees in flower.
But for Diego Rivera the Alameda, the centre of Mexico's
capital. is a historic platform along which the political process of
his coumry has marched. The Alameda has witnessed patriotic
fights, and it has seen !.he passage of traitors; the friends and
enemies of imperialism have passed along it, the reactionaries
and the revolutionaries. So Rivera paimed the history of
Mexico, using the Alameda as a chronological platform. But the
political situation has changed in Mexico; the revolution was in
frank decline, displaced by a new oligarchy pfnouvtaux~richts. the
victory of the "juniors", the victory of the sons of those who
made mane)' out of the Revolu6on. It was no longer the people,
 -
184 Art and Revolution
nor the working class, not the workers nOT the descendants of
the Slrikers of Cananea and Rio Blanco, no longer the pioneer
workers of the Revolution who became generals in the fight
against the federal anny, it was now a new, reactionary
bourgeois class which governed the country. And aiLhough the
Hotel del Prado belonged to the governmefil. a group of
reactionary students weTe inspired to go and damage the mural
in an attempt to destroy it. Rivera had included in his painting
the famous phrase of Ignacio Ramirez (''The Necromancer"):
"God does not exist; the uni,'erse is governed by its own laws";
he also used religious phrases in connection with other people.
But the cavemen could not bear ilia' first phrase. When this
happened. the muralist painters, with rna.fly supponers, went to
fight against the group of students who were pTOfaning Riven.'s
mural and called on the government to repair the damage that
had been done. But the struggle ....·em on. The Hotel del Prado
was a hotel for Yankee tourists, and the mural could not stay.
Olle American ambassador after anOLlter requested its
destruction; all the American government officials who came to
visit Mexico insisted on its desrruaion. And whenever the wife
of the reigning American ambassador met the President or any
high go....ernment official, she would aslc "Why are Bolshevik
murals permitted on the walls of publk buildings?" So the
mural was covered o....er and stayed that way for many long years.
You can see the dose relationship between a government's
political and cultural attitudes. The Mexican governmeOl is no
longer interested in muralism. It does not want political an and
has nOt done so for the last twenty years. The obviously counter-
revolutionary governments of Mexico do not want their people
10 remember zapata's programme, nor the programme of the
Ricardo Flores Magan group. who gave the Mexican Revolution
what little doctrine it has. They preferred to silence our mura.l
movement in the period of Porfirio Diaz. But it is no longer
ideology of the State. The policy of the National Institute afFine
Arts has nOt favoured the development of mural pail1ling for
some time, but exacdy the oppOSite. It does everything it can to
prevent this type of artistic production, and its attitude is tbe
logical consequence of the government's fundamental political
Plastic Arts and Revolution 185
line, both at home and abroad. The National Institute of Fine
Arts was created precisely to foment a popular programme, it
was a state organisation designed (Q fosler a populartrend in art
and therefore to oppose the elitist charaaeristics of the art
movement in the period of Pomrio Diaz. But it is no longer
interested in popularcuhure, which originates From and returns
to the people. What has happened? Why has a law which
intended art to serve the people been turned upside down? 1t is
the result of a danger which is latent in Mexico and the whole of
Latin America.
When revolutions are nOI complete but stop halfway, they
later slide gently badwards. as they have done in Mexico; a
simation which is "eT)' painful for those of us who fought so
strongly fOT it in our youth. The imperialisLS have achieved this,
but trey have found many Mexican ladeys to help theirca.use. It
is unbelievable that there should have been so many.
My friends, arum, inte1leauals and workers of Venezuela:
the Mexico you love is no longer what it was, it is nOt what the
official pseudo-revolutionaT)' propaganda of the last twenty
years whould have you believe. I must say this dearly so that it
will be heard in Mexico itself. But I would not be telling )'ou the
whole truth if I did not tell you today that a new revolution is
already on its way. The first one failed, and failed lamentably,
leaving a million and a half dead in the battles of me revolution.
But now, in these new condilions, \"hat should we Mexican
artists do. how can we contribute with our militancy and our
work.? I would like each of you present to consult with your
consaence. Perhaps you will answer me: "You hdve already
painted enough revolutionary murals, it is time to stop. For too
long you have been painting things which ~xpress the problems
of the people; please do not do so any more. You must paint
innocent subjects now, general subjects or, at the most, poetic
subjects. Why do you still paint political pictures when, as you
say yourselves, the country is nOt in a condition to accept them?
Why paint murals when the government attacks them and even
destroys them?" And I would have to answer: "No, we cannot
do l..hat. We must continue our movemenl which was born of the
Revolution; we must keep our art public and connected with the
186 Art and Revolution
problems of the people; and we must progress lO the second
stage which is already announcing itself on a political level. "
The National Association ofActors asked me (0 paim a mural
wh ieh Diego Rivera was unable to do before he died. They asked
me to paint me history of the lheatTe and the cinema in Mexico.
We discussed me subject and I said mat I thought the subject was
too generalized; I suggested that the subject should be scenic an
in Mexico loday. with the history of the theatre to be used as the
chronological framework. They agreed. But what happened
afterwards? From the stan I had made it quite dear that I, a
pioneer and founder of the Mexican mural movemem, would
have to use my painting ro tell the actors, and indirectly the
authors, that they should do in the theatre what we had done in
art. I could have chosen to paint something of a general,
euphoric nature and I would then not have had the problems I
have today, and .....hich I shall refer to later. But to do that would
have been to betray Orozco, Rivera, Dr. Ad, and all the other
members of our movement, both dead and alive; it would also
have b~n a berrayal of everyone in this counny who has
dedicated himself [0 serving it politically over the last fift)! years.
I had no other choice.
What I did was to divide the mural into two; one part was the
history of Mexican theatre in the past, and in the other I painted
what I thought the thearre, cinema and television should be in
Mexico no..... and in the future. With the help of the writer
Armando de Maria y Campos, I made a very intereSting
discovery about Mexican theatre. I found that Mexico had had a
wonderfully political theatre in the past, although mOst people
knew nothing about it. For example, during the first years of the
Revolution many playwrights, including Rodolfo Usigli, had
wrinen plays .....hich were violently critical of the local caudillo
syscem which was emerging among the federal and regional
go\'ernors, and also among the agrarian and trade union
leaders. The theatre severely cridcised this new bourgeoisie, the
embryo of a new oligarchy. A play which immediately comes to
mind is Rodolfo Usigli's The Gesticulator, and there were many
more. I discovered that during the dictatorship of General Diaz
there had been political theatre; and in fact that it was the only
Plastic Arts and Revolution 187
type of theatre which attracted audiences. Plays like Lllnd and
LibtTty by Ricardo Flores Magon were extremely effective in the
struggle against despotism and in fomenting the agrarian
revolution. The academics of Mexican literature would do very
well to exhume this theatre and study it. At this time, theatre \V3.S
often sarcastically subversive of the dictatorship.
In the Reform period I found excellent satirical plays in which
the liberals attacked their conservalive enemies and at a later
date the French intervention: Maximilian, Carlota and the
attempt to re·incorporate Mexico into European colonialism_ It
moves me to think ofa little play called The Pamler Chinaco, which
was a k.ind ofbawdy sarcastic pantomime which must have been
most effective. There were so many of these little plays, badly
printed, often clandestinely printed, which made fun of the
European coalition against Mexico (a kind of reactionary
International Brigadd_
If we go further back to the colonial ~riod we find Mexican
theatre defending indigenous culture and the Indians; and by
comparing the cultural manifestations of pre·Hispanic art with
those of the colonial period, they were in fact inciting the
patriotic sentiments of the inhabilams of New Spain_ In the
fourteen long years of the struggle for independence. from 1810
to 1824. a frankly subversive theatre travelled the country from
end to end, often playing in the smallest villages. Their rneatre
was a theatre of pantomime. destined to raise the spirits of
Mexicans against the oppression of the colonialists and Spanish
cruellY_
I was unable to find out much about pre-Hispanic theatre in
Mexico, but it may well have contained elements of social
criticism.
This is what 1 discovered and what' paitllcd in my history of
the Mexican theatre, and which helped me (0 form my opinion
on what should be done in the fUlure. In this state of mind, I said
to the Executive comminee: You actors must take a good look. at
your coumry, and must help to change it; you must know that
today, fifry years after the Mexican RevoluLion, the Indians
living at Mezquital (an arid zone less than a hundred kilometres
from the capital) still give their babies pulque to drink because
188 Art and Revolution
spirits are cheaper than water. You muSt get to know your own
people and your own country reallyweJl, and you must use your
an [0 change it. You must nO{ produce provincial copies of the
snobbish productions in the great capitals of the world. You
mUSlconCentrate on the daily problems ofyour people and your
country; you musllearn the artistic language of me COUntry in
which you work, and produce Mexican plays for the Mexican
theatre. This year, 1960, will be important for a1l me peoples of
the world, and most important to the peoples of latin America;
as far as Mexico is concerned, it is lbe fiftieth year of our
glorious revolution which has failed, of the rivers ofblood shed
almost in vain and now convened into the fiction of a Govern-
ment which pretends to be democratic.
1 had air-cady started my mural, and paimed from left to right
the first themes: abstraCtion and realism in scenic an; the
popular essence of real scenic an both now and in the fUlure; the
expressive simultaneity of thearre, cinema and television; the
historical progress of me Mexican indigenous masses in the
process or becoming proletari.an and the epic nature of this
metamorphosis.
I did this with the most enthusIastic suppon of my comrade-
patrons, and m)' next theme was: tragedy. This was the time
when the Mexican government had jusl staged the worst
aggression ever perpetrated by a "revolutionary" government
against lhe organised workers of a coumr)'. More than fin
thousand had been imprisoned, among them of course, all the
leaders. Many railway workers had been tortured and some
killed; but rhe world was ignorant Oflhis, sinc~ the foreign press
agencies and the local newspapers and magazines had been
effcctivfOly gagged. A communist plot was invented, and in
order to make this morl? believable cwo cultural attaches of the
Soviet Embassy were expelled from the country without any
official explanation. The terror was widespread, and even today
affects almost all the intellectuals. The workers had fought in the
~trt'ets, and the Story of a communist plOt was a crude lie
invented by the police and their bosses, The object of the
struggle was higher wages, at a time when the people were
starving.
Plastic Arts and Revolution 189
What could I do under these circumstances? 1 paimed this
situation as a concrete example of tragedy. I paimed the
aggression of the police and the military against the Mexican
workers movement. The aggression of soldiers and police
blindly obeying the orders of their immediate chiefs, who
were in essence obeying the orders of the American State
Deparunem, who received theirs from the great monopolies
who oppressed the whole world. induding Mexico and Latin
America. And what happened? A minoriry of the executive
commiuee, either under orders from the government, or simply
inspired by the current anti-workingdass atmosphere, decided
that my mural was an act of aggression against the government.
I thought that the gentlemen who opposed Mexican mural
painting had decided that political painting was histOrically
useless, so why had they suddenly decided that my work. was
dangerous? They said that crowds of subversives would flock to
the Jorge Negrete Theatre to see my mural, that the students
might try to set fire to the theatre, thai there would be fights
between ideological groups. etC. They then ordered my mural to
be covered, and later the case was tak.en to the courts.
I know that you in Venezuela, like all other South Americans,
are friends of my country; everyone tells me this, drivers,
waiters, lift operators, and the unemployed 1 have met at public
meetings; your most important trade union officials have told
me so. But, my dear friends, I cannot hide the lamentable truth.
Mexico is no longer what it was. It has changed, and from being
in the vanguard of the anti. imperialist struggle it is now quite
openly pro-imperialist My country which was in the forefrom
of revolution in Latin America has become a countcr·
revolutionary hypocrite and the accomplice of imperialism.
I would 53Y to you, Venezuelan artists: You must all ofyou, no
mattel- what your style of paiming, you must support your own
people and the people of Latin America. You do not bave any
immediate problems in Venezuela which can affect your artistic
work, as we do in Mexico. or course, artists must be free to paint
in whatever style they choose, and we in Mexico have been
gravely slandered in this respect and accused of persecuting
abstract paimers. This is a lie. The first exhibition of
190 Art and Revolution
Kandinsky's work in Mexico was sponsored by the mural
painters and the engravers. We have always explained how the
vanguardisl trends can serve the purpose of a new, modern
realism, ahhough we do not agree with these trends on political
and hislOrical grounds. We have always called for a true an ofthe
vanguard but we have always said it should be in accordance
wilh the conditions of its own coumry and that it should
conform to the conditions and functional utilityofits country of
origin.
r cannot say what form this an should take, and I should not
anempt to do so. You must work this out for yourselves on your
own home ground. It must be a functional an. which responds
to the Venezuelan revolution which you are working fOLIt must
respond to your glorious past, to your political foresight and
wonderful struggle. In the country of Bolivar, you cannot
produce paintings without a social content. And you must
express this social content in any 'way you please--you must
express it through formalism or through abstract an if that is
how you want to do it. But you muS[ express it, and if )'Ou do not
want to paint figurative pictures, then you must find another
way in your own artistic ideology; you mun try to express the
pan history of your people and )"Our idea of the future with the
forms and symbols which you choose. You must raise
monuments which the people can understand, even if they are
only understood emotionally. If your language is too difficult,
then you must explain it to the people.
No, my friends, I cannot sarto you, in the name of Mexican
artists, that you must only give your bodies, your work, your
political militancy; nor can I tell you to give only your spirit,
your soul. We ask you to give both these things, to contribute
with your work and your artistic conscience to the problems of
your country and the future of your people.
23
Precepts of David Alfaro
Siqueiros
(Selected bv Requel TIboI)
1924 (In Ihr magazine EI Machete, Nos. 4-;)
In times of decadence, a building is conceived in terms of
style; in times when building is a flourishing art, it is conceived.
in terms of logic. Style is the final and invariable result of the
means and materials in which the work. is carried out. Beauty is
the invariable and inescapable result of logic, solidjty and
balance.
19)1 (A.mweT to a queJtionnairl' pmmled by tht Frrnch magazine
Transition diucttd by EugtntJoltu)
Until our times art, both objectively and subjectively. has
been a political factor at the service of the ruling classes (and still
is under the dictatorship of the proletariat), and in the best of
conditions has been a compulsory feast for these classes. Now
mat the traditional means of artistic expression have been
displaced by new fanors (the photograph, the cinema, etc.) with
a wider political range, painting, sculpture and other artistic
expressions pander to the degenerate tastes of the bourgeoisie.
This is its fictitious freedom,
19J2 (utter tQ hiJ friend William Spratling, Aml'rican widen! in
Mexico. ThiJ letter WaJ writtenfrom UJJ Angell'S} California)
The authorities of your country have refused me a permit to
stay here any longer. They want me to leave immediately,
192 Art and Revolution
although hundreds of imponaOl American intelleCtuals have
asked for my visa to be extended. I am really sorry to have to
leave the Slates, because I have been thinking about industrial
areas like Pittsburgh and Saint Louis for some time. In any case.
I believe I have done something of interest, because I believe I
have initiated a drive to pain! murals in the open, exposed to the
SUIl and the rain. If you think this over, you will realise its
importance, because it is something totally new in the world,
and establishes the basis of future an, ,"'hich must be public to
the highest degree.
/936 (Letter /0 hisftitnd ManQ Ajwuolo. writttnfrom New York)
On April 15th an international exhibition of an and graphics
against fascism and war will be inaugurated in the New School
of Social Research. This is a wonderful opponunit)· for my
experimental workshop and we have all staned to work our
hardest to prepare work for this exhibition. [ v.-orked right
through Saturday night and all day on Sunday, stopping only to
eat a few of the tasteless sandwiches )'ou get here. The works
produced have been splendid, and I am not exaggerating. They
amply confirm my long held theories about revolutionary an.
Although they have not yet been exhibited, they have been
talked about a lot and people are constantly coming to my
studio to see them. I will describe [0 you the one I finished last
night, which is called "Binh of Fascism", It is painted with
enamel spray paint, but I have used a new method which I
discovered. I make use of a painting accident. through which
two or more colours are sprayed on and as they become
absorbed into each other produce the most fantastic and
magical forms thal can be imagined; it can only be compared to
geological formations, to the multi·coloured and vari-shaped
seams seen in moumains, to the cell-construction which can
only be seen under a microscope. II symhetises the creation of
life, the mysteries of life which obey deep and unwritten laws.
These "absorptions" (as we call them in our artistic jargon)
contain the mOSl perfen forms imaginable, spirals whose
infinite curls are perfeCtly modelled, shapes offish and monsters
that could never be created with traditional methods. And
Precepts 193
above all, a kind of tumultuous, stonny dynamism, a son of
physical and social revolution, which is quite frightening. This
new work of mine makes use ofan infinite variety of techniques;
I have used them all: the paint brush, the spray gun, shading,
scraping, aU the trick.s of the trade. And apart from my glorious
discovery of "absorptions", I must tell you that 1 have finally
found the real way to use the spray gun, I "have the bull by the
horns", and I swear J won't let him go this time, now that I know
that this mechanical brush can create space and depth, that it
can mak.e space concave and give convex volumes unsuspected
strength. Furthermore it is invaluable in producing Rat surfaces,
you can never get such a smooth sUlface with an ordinary paint
brush. You can also produce lines as fine as a hair. It can
produce shading which vibrates with emotion, and it has given
me a lot more knowledge about depth in painting; fonnedy I
limited this problem [0 a question of values. "The Birth of
Fascism" is also my best work politically, because it is free of the
mysticism and passivity of my earlier work, it is more synthetic
and more dynamic, it combines the objective with the
subjective, "real" realism with mental realism; what you can
actually see. ",,'ith your thoughts. your memory and your
imagination which affect )'our actual vision; and I could also
mention rhe ensemble of heterogenous political truths.
My picture shows a stormy sea, the stormiest that the
imagination of the world can conceive, with agitated forms,
transparencies, dark inside and boiling on the outside with
dazzling foam. [0 the middle of the picture, towards the right,
stands the Statue of Liberty but only its head shows above the
water. On the left, a book. floats, and il symbolises the religion,
morals and philosophy of the bourgeoisie who have been
shipwrecked. In the background, on an enonnous rock, in (he
midst of a hurricane of waves which break. against its sides. the
Soviet Union emerges, white and shining, without words or
numbers, symbolised simply by metallic structures. chimneys
and a Rag which winds itself about them, like a red snake,
joining them together in an organisation to build socialism; in
the foreground there is a life raft, made of planks ofwood lashed
together with rope, and on the raft a terribly fat woman, old and
194 Art and Revolution
Aaccid, who looks Jik.ean international prostitute, is giving birth
to a three headed monster: Mussolini. Hitler and Heal'"Sl. The
woman's face shows both pain and happiness, because she
believes iliat her horrible offspring may be her long awaited
salvation. Of course I have had to dissimulate the physical
description of lhe birth a bit., because I wanted to avoid
undesirable psychological reactions on me pan of middle-class
viewers. so given to hypocritical Quakerism.
I am happy to be work.ing in the way and technique I tried so
hard to find. And this is only the beginning of a wonderful
future. r shall create living forms from nature itself. I shall
investigate the science of my trade to the marrow arits bones. It
is wonderful to have such an objective in life. J shall use my best
voice, my best language to serve the revolution. YOll should help
the comrades (whether they are individually clever or foolish);
they represent the most intelligent party in the world, which
implies civilisation and beauty for the furure of humanity. Help
them! Help us! You know we are right, that justice is on our
side, justice of the millions of poor Mexicans exploited like
animals in the south of the United States, and treated as lepers
by the sadistic, ignorant rich. I have lived in California and
visited the Imperial Valley where I saw how our poor
compatriots are cheated OUt of their wages and their property.
The slate of Texas has the most reactionary government in the
United States today, equalled only by Colorado. They are real
slave drivers, with the savagery typical of the Southem
bourgeoisie, as cruel as the Spaniards in colonial Mexico, but
without their culture, the culture which buil! our marvellous
churches.
1941 (utier to the Spanish painter Jou Rmau, thm lilJing in M~xi,o,
wlw had co/laboraLed with SiqutirOJ on the mural "Portrait of the
Bourgeoisie". painted in 1939 a/. the headquartm of the Mexican
Electricians Syndicate. The leUer WQJ writlm from Chile, in the
month '!f December)
I am more convinced than ever of the need for team work in
modern social an. It is physically impossible to cover !lOO square
metres without the help of people who have specialised in
Precepts 195
painting murals by mechanical means. At firS{ I meant only to
have the help of workers, without the "inspiration" in which
today's artists are immersed. But it turned out that they were
only good fa: k.i~chen work, they could only be servants; they
were so pnmltlve as to preclude the slightest creative
cont.ri?utio~ whi~h ~ne always gets from people who truly
partiCipate In thiS kmd of work. You will understand my
problem when I (ell you that these workers called all dark
~olo~n black, all light colours white, and the only colour
Identified as a colour, was red. I then thought I might gel some
help from twO paimers who were producing pOlS in this school.
I approached the twO who seemed to be the most inquiring and
leas,t satisfied with th~jr Egyptian pottery technique, but once
agam J found myself In trouble; my new helpers collaborated,
but everything they painted had to be re-done, which wasted a
10l of time and materials, nm to mention the wear and tear on
my nervous system, the delicate nervous system which God
provided us artists wilh. They were nice boys, but even more
academical than Clave (no pun intended), the Catalan who came
to Mexico towards the end of the nineteenth century and
turned the Academy of San Carlos into a factory of well-crafted
transfers. When the lads first saw (he concave walls of the two
I~(eral panels, they were panic-stricken, and they became really
distressed by the problem of active forms. or course they
recovered and one even went so far as to sign the piCture I had
asked him to paint. What do you think of that? What if each of
us ,had Signed the bits of the Electrical Syndicate mural he had
palmed? It is hard to imagine a stronger manifestation of easel
painting mentality than that, on these four walls, against which I
ha\'e been banging my head for the last three months. 0 f course,
(he w~rk is slo~ly being done, but it belongs more to my
penultimate penod and does not provide a logical continuation
of the political painting being done in Mexico today, such as aUf
mural. for me EJ~ctricians Syn~icate. However, it is perhaps
more Important In some ways, ItS style is more homogenous,
and the movement has been resolved more satisfactorily,
because the room is larger and I have been able to understand
its geometry more satisfactorily.
 -
196 Art and Revolution
1943 (uUer to the Cuban art critic JOJe Gamel. Sial, wriltm in
HavornJ)
Amelia Pelaez is an oUlStanding example of me way in which a
vigorous artist should approach the modern trends in EUTope.
She went [0 Paris and for a time was inspired b), Juan Cris,
Picasso and DeTain, she men returned to her own country and
saturated herself emotionally with what she found there, she
studied her own COUntry as thoroughly as she studied modern
painring in Paris, and for me last few -years she had been
providing the artists of Cuba with the foundations of their
future development, ,,,hen Cuban painting will begin to acquire
internal values.
'944 (From tht article "Crntre of Mooml &ali,st Art" published in the
cultural juppltment ofEI NacionatJuLy 2nd, 1944)
The modem painting of France, or more exactly of
Paris-and that of its best paimer, Picasso-should be taken
as an imponam amecedent of rebellion against official
academism, as a movement which aims to restore to the arts the
fundamenral values that have been lost, and which seeks to find
or increase subjeCli\'e elemen15. Picasso in his mural
"Cuernica" and his etchings "Dream and lie of Franco" found
himself on the threshold of the social art movemem, our
movemem of public, ideological art, which began in Mexico
with our mural painting, and threw overboard the concept of
Art for An's Sake. with its apoliticism, which was characteristic
of the School of Paris, and which is still i15 most vigorous
representative.
1945 (From a lecture delivered at the ImWule oj MeXlcan·RttJJian
eultura/Interchange. Mexico City, Odob~ 15th, 1945)
We came to the conclusion that it was notenough JUUtO paint
walls, that our an should be circulated more widely, in other
words that it should be printed, and that is how El Machele was
born. This magazine has played a wonderful role in Mexican
political life. It was founded by painters who wrote the articles
and did the graphics, and it was widely circulated both at home
Precepts 197
and abroad. What was the importance of this magazine, which
was nicknamed "movable walls"? It introduced us to the
Mexican people, it brought us closer to them. It was through
this magazine that we began to be invited to workers' meetings,
and that they wrote to us explaining why they were on strike and
what they were fighting for. Every day we gOt a greater insight
into Mexican life. At that time, in 1924, Mayakovsky came to
Mexico. We could easily understand his significance and,
through his wonderful poetry recitals, through his monu-
mental, heroic writings, he gave us some tacit advice about
artistic form. He was not speaking with his own voice but
with the voice of the Soviet Union, with the voice of the
proletarian revolution, which opened the doors of the world to
a new order. Political life drew us intO the workers' movement,
El MfUh~t~ took us to the fauories. Mexican painters became the
workers' leaders, some became leaders of the Communist Party
and organised the workers of Jalisco. We were directly and
practically responsible for the success of the revolutionary
workers' movement and the strikes. We took part in the miners'
strike, the railway workers' strike and we were in the forefront of
the ami-fascist movonent. There was hardly a trade union
dispute between 1925 and 1930 in which we did nOt participate.
What was the importance ofall this?The enormou.slyimporta.nt
fact was that the Revolution had given us a more human view of
society and of our 0",'Tl country; the proletariat gave us a new
critical sense, it gave us its socialist doctrine, which was
personified b)' thf'" Soviet Union, and when in 1930 we began' to
paint again, our formerly vague ideas had become categorical.
Towards the end of 1930, Serge Eisenstein the Russian cinema
producer. came to Mexico, and his theories and films acquired
great importance for us. Eisenstein applied the method of
dialectics to the analysi.s of art; he was practically the first artist
to use Marxism in analysing the aesthetics ofsociety. I first heard
from Eisenstein that the aesthetic perspective was false, and that
various voices should be superimposed from different angles.
He was intereSted in movement, in chiaroscuro, in elemems of
(hesis and and thesis. Art is the conjugation of opposites, light
exists because darkness exists, but neither of them exists on its
198 Art and Revolution
own; movement without a Static corollary is not movement.
And I undersmod from him that painting was fundamentally a
matter of dialectics.
194, (From an optn ktter to Spanuh Republican painlm, published in
No. :l'jO of the magauTU Asi, Mexico, October 6th, J94,)
What was the position of you Spanish Republican painters as
a whole towards our movement, and how did this affect your
work?
firstly, and inexplicably. you divided into twO bands, the
academics and the modems (in the European sense, ofcourse).
Then you broke away from your aesthetic groups and
functioned as individuals. In general terms, you "became
illlrQvcned artists, alLhough your cafe existence persisted. YOu
had nothing to do with the art movement of our country and no
real personal contact with Mexican artists.
You adopted an Olympian position and viewed our Mexican
art panorama from a negative, critical position. You criticised it
in terms of [mtt, in spire of the fact rhat you were artiSls with a
democratic political education; you behaved like bohemians of
Montparnasse or traditional aesthetes, and your yardstick was
"beautiful" or "ugly", or at best the falsely objective academical
"well painted" or "badly paimed". You did not realise that
your "taste" and your "scholastic" critical methods were inade-
quate for the appreciation of this new artistic phenomenon
temperamentally so differem to your own preferencer-which
must be respected-nor its different technique, of which you
had had absolutely no experience. Some ofyou even went so far
as to criticise the Mexican techniqueoffreseo painting. And you
even criticised the way we composed our pictures, although you
had no practical experience at all in this type of art. I know of
no valid criticism of the many negative aspectS of our
production which consider it as a new artistic objective
intimately connected with problems of ideology. You were not
able to contribute usefully to an endeavour which was politically
oriented in the same direction as yourselves. And because we
Mexican painters greatly admire some of your work, it is
obvious that for many long years we waited for your support.
Precepts 199
Up to now I have only spoken of your criticism of our work.
8Ul ~hat of.your own work, historically parallel to that of me
Mexican ~a..mter~ w~o rema.in faithful to their original social
and techmcal obJectives? I shall refer in the firsl place 10 me
modernists.
Alm~st all of yo~ have painted as individuals, with dangerous
nostalgiC elements III your work (such as your frequem essays in
the sryleofGoyal, orelse you have taught both in official schools
a~d privately..Your techniqu.e. your slyle and use of malerials is
still exacdy as H was when you came from Spain. As far as I know
you ha~e never become involved in our Mexican experimems,
excep~ In the case of the Mexican Electricians Syndicate. Our
experiments have awoken interest in bOlh the United States and
France. None ofyou were at all interested in the I nstitute for rhe
Ch~mical In~e.stigalion of Plastic Marerials applied to Art,
which the Mlnlslry of Education set up through the National
Polytechnic InStitute; it w.as as though yOll believed that your
own knowledge was supenor. You were equally uninterested in
our research into surface activiry in mural painting. nor have
you shown any interesl in mural painting or monumental art.
Even when you were publicly invited by the Direction of
Aesthetic Education to exhibit in the show "The Drama of War
in contemporary Mexican an", you contributed nothing {and
only a few anendedl. Only a very few of you ha\'e contributed to
philanthropic exhibitions. whereas most of you-for example
Renau-who were.good at publicity have produced ninety-nine
per cenl co~meraal art (for example the Tampico restaurant,
and the Ca~mo at Cu.ernavacaJ. Your grealest production has
been Satteflng pOrtTaHS, and your greatest interest has been to
make money. No public activity, no theorising, no interest in the
theory of our Mexican movement.
. Your b~dies are in Mexico, but your heans and thoughts are
m the Pans an world of the immediate past, a past which will be
destroyed by Ihe new social drive of the post-war world.
. And now 1 shall refer to those who belong to a tendency which
IS not modem.
You believe that the Spanish period of the past known as the
"Alfonsino" period is still the living example of the best style
200 Art and Revolution
and artistic function of our limes. You represent the
"tambourine" style of Spain (which is even worse than OUf
Mexican "picturesque" style, as an antecedent). You have taken
~lO no~i~e of us, ~ut conserve the false realism of this style. an
lnSensHlve profiCIency. and you make commercial concessions
to the lea.sl educated of those who buy your work, to me
wealthy parvtnUJ. Your exhibition at the Circle of Fine Am
Pa~ace--apan from !.he possible talent of some of the young
paInters who follow your S[yle--has been a clear demonstration
thal you have been umouched by the magnificent euhural
traditions of this country; Greco, Velazquez and Coya would
most cenainly not have remained unaffected as you have been.
And you have complemeOled )'our work. with the most
co,:"merci~lised, aca?emic ~eorising, and belie\'e that you are
fillIng a VOid by creaung a Glrele of the FineAns in Mexico, with
all the old trappings, JUSt lik.e the Asturian Centre and the
Galician Centre in Havana. and you believe you have o·eared a
new school of plastic arts which will save this country from il5
ignorance of the subject.
It is obvious to me mat JUSt as your modern collea.gues have
been unable to shake off their propensity for the "advanced"
techniques of Paris, you are still actually 11\;ng here in Mexico
an aesthetic paSt which the political upheaval in your coumry
has destroyed forever. You are nOI in Spain, because what you
see as Spain is something else, and you are not living in Mexico,
because you live a life emirely isolated from the real Mexico.
To sum .up: Your experience in die Spa.nish Republic which
defended Itself so heroically against Franco has not affected
your views on contemporary art. Nor have you been affected
by the preseO! and past of the country in which you now live.
You ~un th~ dang~r of returniflg to Spain-aesthetically
speaklllg-wnh nothmg new: you wiH take back an art produced
by the hysteria of an individual; an an destined to adorn the
houses of the plutocrats; a speculative an destined for smart an
ga~leries; a grap~ic an destined to be primed in prohibitively
pnced ~I'C mag.azln~s, etc. You would be taking back to Spain
SOl11ethlll~ whl~h Its. people no longer want. The Spanish
people, With theIr polmcal consciences, would wane you to take
201
Precepts
back an improved version of our humble but transcendental
Mexican experiment of art committed to the struggle of the
people. An art which cannot be like the Academic art of feudal
~pain, before the revolution, nor can it be the chic, dandy
mteJlec~ual art or pr~-war P~~is. Spain will expect from you a
theoreucal and practical position based on the democratisation
of knowledge and culture.
1949 (From th~ aTticl~ ''Th~ modnn art mounnmL ne~ds to cTtale an art
critU:ism thtJJ. will Attp pace with It and aumd the droiatwnJ and
conJwioTU which exiJt today". Pub/iJhed in tJu magaunL Hoy.
No. 664. Mexico, November / :Jth, 1949) -
D~ used (Q say: "Arc critics are gentlemen who try (Q
explam 10 others something they don't understand themselves."
Ifby thi~ Degas meant that he was against an criticism, I do not
agree WIth him. All artistic movements need crilicism, scientific
criticism which will give them daily support. But if criticism in
Degas' time (the beginnings of impressionism) was like it is
today in Mexico, I heartily endorse Degas' opinion.
How ca~.l ~plain whal I want ?fcriticism? I am trying to say
th~~ ~n ~uClsm cannOI be eclecuc; to speak of neutrality in an
cTluasm IS nonsense, there can never be neutral criticism. In the
pasl criticism was based on the orthodoxy ofa mythology or on
lhe orthodoxy of established dogma, bUI we do not know ofany
profesSional an criticism. ]n the modern world, the: firsl art
criticism came from the artists themselves, in their Struggle to
free themselves from previous schools and routines. And almost
at t~e same time, great writers began [0 put their writing at the
service of the new objectives and aesthetic programmes. This
was true of Baudelaire and the impressionists, lola and the
school of Cezanne, ApoUinaire with fauvism and cubism. These
~ri~e:s took t~e whole movement under their wing, not the
mdlvld~~1 artists. Of course the clarity and doctrinal unity of
these crlncs corresponded to that of the aritsts themselves.
What has happened in Mexico? Our modern movement in
~exic~which is disringuished by the fact thal it wages an
lI1ternanonal battle for the development of public forms of
art-suffers from rhe same defect as the Mexican Revolution, it
202 Art and Revolur;on
is too spontaneous. by which I mean that it lacks an adequate
theoretical basis and sometimes it even lacks a programme. J
have often said, and I believe I am ri~ht in saying this, th~t most
of our artislS "heard the call, but dId not know where It came
from". Their contribution was instinclive and comparable to
the contribution made by Francisco Villa and the other
"caudillos" [0 the fighting and to politics.
Our great Mexican writers-perhaps our Baudelaires and
our Zolas--behaved no differently. The most they did was to
give us a literary or poetic "smile" from time [0 time.
The modem an movemem of Mexico must develop an an
criticism which will provide itwith suppOrt, otherwi~ i~ runs the
risk of cataStrophe and deviations. This type of cnUClsm must
begin by formulating a p.ernise which will synthetis~ the ~e
nature and historic importance of the movement. This premise
can only be as follows. Modem Mexica~ painting is not a
colonial or semi-colonial prolongal1on of modem
cosmopolitan painting whi~ o~i~inated .in Paris at. the
beginning of this century; neither IS It a Mexlca~ or Am~n~n
graft Onto the great tree of the School of Pans; nor IS It a
movement which exclUSively derives from Mexico's great
ancestral traditions which the Mexican Revolution brought to
light again; far less is it the product. of a few g~iuse~ ....: ho
function outside the scheme of his[Qncal facts; neither IS Il a
movement which was born overnight into full maturity. Modern
Mexican painting is the first contempo~ary public ~anifes~tion
of art in a world of private art. It IS the first lflternauonal
experience of realism in both theory. and. practi.ce, which now,
thirty years later, is finding expreSSlon In Pans, Euro~e, the
States and South America. The fact that it had contact With the
modern an tendencies of Paris, both in its beginnings and at the
present time, in no way contradicts wha.t ~ have ~aid, because the
Mexican movement represents a transltJonal Imk between the
decadent forms of capitalist culture and the cultural forms
which are emerging from the new socialist civilisation.
Precepts 203
195 J (From the artide "Tamayo is a good painter but he htJJ dmrled
from the Mexican modern painting mOTJement", published in
No. 760 oJlhe rrwgatine Hoy)
It has been rumoured that we are saying thal Tamayo is not a
Mexican. This is a lie; we all know that Tamayo was born at
Oaxaca, and that his work contains elements of Mexican
popular art. We all know that Picasso is a Spani~rd, ~ut would
anyone be so rash as to say that his work was inspIred by ~r
forms pan of any Spanish school? EI Greco ;-vas Greek, b~t hiS
painting was undeniably Spanish. Tamayo IS a good patnter,
perhaps even a magnificent painter, but he has deserted fro~
the Mexican art movement. Tamayo has gone over to the Pans
ttend but nevertheless he deludes himself that his work is really
Mexican and belongs to an international movement, Tamayo's
work belongs to a trend which is fundamentally opposed to our
own movement which also foons pan ofan international trend,
but another international trend, which has been directly or
indirectly recognised by all the critics who saw our work at the
Venice Bieonale.
19P (Reply to Vianie Lombardo Tolrdatw, giTJen to RaJa C(JJlro in an
mtnview/or thernagazint Hoy)
Our comrade Lombardo Toledano begins his article by
saying that he is going to point OUt "s?me min~r error~", b~t
finishes by asking: "Why do the revolutlon~ry artISts aVOid their
responsibility? They can paint wh~t ~ey ~lke ~n the ,easel, but
when they paint on the walls ofbul1dmgs In a City which can be
seen by thousands and ~ousands of .Mexicans over several
generations, they must neither comradl,ct thems,~lves nor bury
the brilliant tradition they began some time ago.
If this were true, it would not be a minor error but an
enormous and very serious error. Further on, referring to the
years J922-4 when our movement s,~rted, ~e say,s: " ... o~r
painters make use of their manual a~lhty, lh,elr bral~s and their
emotions to bring to Rower what IS new to MeXICO and the
world. In this way, they began painting on the walls of the
ancient schools of San Iidefonso and Ss. Peter and Paul, of the
204 Art and Revolution
Ministry of Education, The School of Agronomy at Chapingo
and many oLhers." It must be recalled that at that time the
Secretary for Public Education was Jose Vasconcelos, and the
director of the National Preparatory School was Viceme
Lombardo Tolerlano {at the time the driving force of our
movemem}. At that time Vasconcelos was a radical who called
the bourgeoisie <'the lired reactionary oxen"; today he is an
illustrious lawyer and a great novelist, but he has submitted to
the yoke he formerly condemned. Lombardo Toledano, that
brilliant leader of the working classes both in Mexico and in
Latin America, who achieved prominence in the imernational
workers' movemelll, has no bureaucratic influence in the
Autonomous University. Those days, it is important to
l'emember, were the days when the ami-feudal Mexican
revolution was in full swing, and Yankee imperialism was being
fought, or at least its pressure was being resisted; today the
revolution is running down and sometimes seems to have
capitulated entirely, and as Lombardo himself has said, there is
the most absolute surrender to Yankee imperialist designs. As
you can see, there is abyss between the two platforms, and we
intellectuals are merely a superstructure. It is quite obvious that
we carmot do today what we did in the past. Nor can we do what
we did in the times of the Obregon and Calles demagoguery, or
during the progressive government of General Cardenas. Today
for the first time in the history of Our contemporary revolution,
our government is able to discriminate, it can mutilate and
seize a work of art which itself had commissioned to present at
an exhaustive exhibition of Mexican art in Europe. The
government Can even say without blushing that no picture with a
political content will be included. What political benefit does
the government derive from this outrage? Public pressure had
obliged the government to postpone a military pact with the
American government. The Americans showed that they were
annoyed and something had to be done. Although this may
seem incredible, the American government found that it still
had a card to play: it could publicly attack the Mexican art
movemeru:, premediratingly stirring up the greatest possible
scandal. This problem was deeply political, and could only be
Precepts 205
solved by a change of political direction at home. And this is the
point where I should like to ask myself and my colleagues a
question. Can we continue to collaborate with the government
as artists, withOut implicitly accepting their policies? Can we in
fact paint in these circumstances pictures of "ardent Mexican
reality", as our comrade Lombardo Toledano would Iik.e us to
do? Are we not running the danger of providing the
government with further opportunities [Q kow[Qw to American
imperialism? Only a professional organisation, which we do
not have today, could answer these questions adequately.
Both Comrade Lombardo Toledano and myself know
perfectly well that the "burning reality of Mexico" today could
be symbolised as follows: The government of Mexico on the
backs of the people; the government of the United States on the
back of the Mexican government. and over all three of them,
Wall Street. What other reality could we paint on the walls of the
University City? But could we really paint this on the univerSity
walls? And in the next few years, what would happen to Mexican
mural paiming, which has just entered a period of great
technical progress? Perhaps we best thing that could happen
would be for the painters and the friends of Mexican painting to
wonder whether we have not arrived at another 1925, when we
had to leave the immovable walls of buildings and transfer our
art to the movable walls which were the pages ofour magazine El
Machete. This would only mean changing one k.ind of public art
for another, the only form possible under a regime of terror. In
my opinion this would be preferable to dressing up a counter-
revolutionary period of history in red clothing. Let these words
serve as a basis for discussion in these disordered and worrying
limes.
195.J (From the lecture "Bad architecture Jecond to bad painting".
Society oj Architects, October 9th, 195..0
The building of the University City has been announced. We
have been told that Mexican architects, engineers and builders
will use Mexican materials to build a building of great
architectural significance. What a wonderful opportunity! We
painters, who have been talking about unitary art for the last
206 Art end Revolution
Chirty years, now have this wonderful opportunity in which
architects, painters and sculptors will all work together. When
me work began we asked the managers to include mural
painters in the team of architects and engineers who were going
to do the work. But this was nor to be. We might have con-
tributed our ideas, the ideas which marured throughout OUf
political and artistic experience.
The architects wefe just beginning to free themselves from the
concepts of Le Corbusier. They were beginning to realise that
architecture is not a machine. although they then came to think
that if it was nOI a machine it mmi[ be a piece of sculpture or a
picNre, which was equally wrong. They finally accepted thai
there must be some painting inside the Univeniry City. but we
were not permitted to pal ticipate in the planning stages. We
wrote to (he architect in charge of the building, Carlos Lazo,
and said that the muralists should be allowed to form pan of the
building commission. He took no notice of us, and the painters
were contracted separately, so that we can justifiably wash our
hands of me results. We most certainly have no responsibility
for whatever happens. I do not inrend to run down the project of
the University City, far from it. I believe it is one of the most
important architecrural projects that have been carried out in
Mexico, and one ofthe largest projects in the world. But it might
be a good idea to analyse the University City in connection with
many other buildings which are being put up all over our
counrry. The University City is clearly influenced by European
formalism. It is fuU of useless, expensive detail; different levels
which have only been built for the sake of beauty and not
functionality; scenographic effects with no architectural
function. The University City is evidence of the most negative
type of intellectual thought in our country today-that love for
anciem things, for rusticity that seems so paradoxical in modem
art .. This love for antiquity disguised as revolutionary comes to
us In pan from Frank Lloyd Wright. In his wake, we find
architects building walls in houses out of the stone used to fence
pigsties, because of the "beauty" of the stone. A large quantiry
of useless materials are combined in what] consider a reAenion
of cubism. The cubists used sand, pieces of iron, newspaper
Precepts 207
cuttings, razor blades; and Mexican artists are doing lhe same
thing with expensive materials. Their interest in materials is
pure sensuality and has no structural value, it is a defect of
pseudo-modem painting which has become incorporated into
contemporary architecture. The University City is full of
concrete ornamentation, faced in stone, rather lik.e the hollow
columns of Californian architecture. Is it possible that we who
live in a country with a great pre-Hispanic architecture, can
forget that stone walls were always painted? This was done, not
only because form is formless unless it is coloured-the classics
understood this perfectly-but also because the paim made' the
stone waterproof. Both engineers and architects should be
aware of this. Why was all Mexican colonial architecture, which
was frequemly beautifully carved, also paimed? One of the
reasons was due to the materials used, which rendered the walls
waterproof. Where the plaster has been removed, the walls ha\'e
been eaten away. And they say to us: "How beautiful these old
peeling walls are!" That may be so, but their beauty has come
with age, you cannot produce a patina like that artificially. Art is
most certainly truth. We must wait and see how our modem
buildings age, but the pleasure will nOt be for our
contemporaries.
And what about landscaping? I believe the same type of
mistake has been made here; by trying to imitate nature you
cannot produce a good garden. A group of treeS here, another
group there; undoubtedly this is not good aesthetically and
more especiall)' so when combined with a monumental type of
architecture. Great terraces are destroyed by small groups of
plants, arranged in a kind of puerile "naturalism", like pre-
fabricated oases in Mexican colours. They say they are trying to
Mexicanise our architecture. They should take a look at the
terraces of Chich en Itza, and of UxmaJ, clean, uncluttered and
surprisingly monumental. What is happening is that the
architecture of the small private house is being transplanted to
large-scale urbanistic architecture. This preoccupation with
antiques is killing lhe plastic ans allover the world.
There are two visible tendencies in the University City: one is
the sryle ofLe Corbusier, which repeats the architectonic forms
208 Art and Revolution
which predominate all over the world, and the orner wams to
Mexicanise these sirunures by dressing them up in little
Mexican kilts and shins, like a typical American tourist who has
visited Cuemavaca.
The pedimenrs were encrusted to an architect who may
possibly be very talented. but in this case he imitated a piece of
pre.Hispanic liturgical architecture. What is il? Is it the ruin ofa
pyramid? It is obviously nO( a pyramid, because me pyramids
were decorated and paimed. Is it perhaps the walls ofa pyramid
which has entirely lost its plaster, paint and bas-relief? No, sir!
When you turn the corner you find it is a modem wall. They tell
us they are "Mexicanising" architecture. This is totally illogical.
The pyramids were builllo function as platforms for religious
ceremonies, because in pre-Hispanic Mexico liturgical
ceremonies were held in the open air. Ho'''' can we utilise these
truncated pyramids with their sides formed of steps as the
outside walls of a hollow architecture? When the visitor (omes
upon these inclined walls ofbare stone, he might think they were
solid stOne walls at least; but the stone isonly a facing, They may
say that "they are tired of the cold architeClure called
functionalism and are returning to artistic architecture". What
they are really saying is that they are returning to a kind of
indigenous art of formalism, because architecture can only be
beautified by the add ilion ofa picture or a piece ofsculpture. In
architecture authentic beauty can only be derived from
authentic functionality. J agret" mat architectUre must be
something more than JUSt "a machine to live in"; but it must
not be rransformed into a picture or a piece of sculpture.
Architecture is an expression of integral realism in which beauty
derives from functionality. Reality cannot be subdivided or
mutilated. Where will this Mex..icanisation of style get us? What
has remained of previous Mexican nro-Aztec or neo-colonial
architecture? Nothing; there is nothing we can defend at this
time. We can defend it historically by saying that it was a natural
consequence of a period, bUt we cannot. admire it. The same
thing will happen with the indigenous trend in our architecture
today. What we could take from our great pre-Hispanic
tradition is its monumentality, its functional logic, its
Precepts 209
constructive realism; but you will not learn from Chichen Ina
by copying the style of Chichen Itza. If the architects were to say
that new universal types of construction will develop from the
use of concrete, iron, glass, plastics and new concepts of
building, I would agree with mem. Universal principles and
experiences cannot be avoided. What is bad is to start at the
wrong end, by fixing the style a prion. Style comes as a final
consequence of the process of an, nm as the beginning. Many
factors determine style, which cannot be anticipated. When style
is anticipated, art falls into an academic, decadent routine.
SryJism marks the beginning of the end of an artistic period.
Stylisation belongs to the virtut1Ji, who are craftsmen rather than
artists. When man must have a new material inOl'der to solve a
new problem, he searches for it, he discovers it, he invents it, he
creates it. This is the manifestation of man's creative strength,
rathel' than a conformist acceptance of limitations. When man
wanted to move faster t.han the horse he invented the car, and
when he wanted to fly he invented the airplane. Art is the same,
in spite of those who believe the past is insuperable. Because we
do not understand the importance of materials, we are making
errors which were made before, during the timeofPomrio Diaz,
and in the firsl years of the Revolution: the mistake of thinldng
that you can make something national by dressing it in
traditional Mexican clothes.
But one thing must be made very clear: there are great
differences of opinion regarding realist an fonm, between
myself and the Rivera-Q'Gorman-Chavez Morado group; we
use different technical processes in our search for realism; but
we have no fundamental political differences, we are both
fighting for social realism. This does not mean that we. should
not argue passionately about our differences. That would be a
grave. mistak.e.
19')) (From tIlL prtJace "Satish Gujral and. contemporary Mtxican
painting", wriltm for tht catalogue oj this Hindu painter's
exhibition in Mtxico, AugUJt-September 195.1)
It is highly significant that Asian painters are showing an
interest in our Mexican movement of social an, and this is
210 Art and Revolution
doubtless due to the great political upheaval in Asia. The
following questions spring naturally [0 my mind. What and how
should Indian painters paim, coming as they do from a COUntry
which was colonial umil recently and is now valiantly fighting to
free il.5elf from semi-colonialist oppression? Should they
continue to paim in the styles of their grandiosepast, asso many
orner economically dependent countries did at the beginning of
this century? Should they foUow the intellectual norms of the
"supercivilised" snobbish art market of the School of Paris, like
most of the modern paimers of Cuba, Argel1lina, Uruguay and
other Latin American countries, although in India there is no
decadent bourgeoisie to providf" a market for their work? Only
a fool, ignorant of the most elemental problems of humanity,
could answer in the affirmative. I know that those who ding to
their national traditions are inspired by a national feeling which
is constructive, but if they persist in these styles they are bound
to fall into anOther type of colonialism-the superficial tourist
type of mentality proper to a foreign visitor. The forms and
styles of a grandiose past can only be a starting point, a national
platfonn from which we can attain a universal level. The
nations of today were born from the nations of yesterday, but
they are different, they have a different economy. different
politics, different idiosynvasies. which need their own cultural
stages of development. In India today, as in all the oppressed
countries ofAsia and Latin America, artists must join their work
and their Lives to the struggle of the people. and this is why they
can learn much from our Mexican movement, both from its
mistakes and its achievements. Because we have the same type of
economic, politicaJ and cultural problems, they will learn more
from us than they would even from the Soviel Union and the
Popular Democracies.
1956 (From the artide: "Myexpmma: inpainlingmuraiJ in exteriors ",
published in the po.ptr Excelsior, in their supplement "Diorama
de fa cullum", Sunday, March 25th. 1956)
I hope to be able to answer questions that have arisen wich
regard to external murals, which the public have shown great
interest in. Before beginning, I would like to tell you what my
Precepts 211
criteria is in judging art, whether my own or that of olhers. Th.e
first thing to judge is whether a trend is good or bad. Unless thiS
is done it is impossible 10 proceed logically. An old adage has il
"that you cannot understand the detaHs ~'ithou~ firs.t u:nder-
standing the wbole". You must then decide, mil wllhm the
framework. of the trend. whether the particular manifestation
being judged is adequate or otherwise. And finally )'ou must
evaluale the talent and abiliryofa particular artist.
This is the onl), system ofart criticism whjch has accompanied
all the imponant movements in the history of ~r~. A pu:cl}'
emotional appreciation of a.n individual act of amsllC creallon,
considered independently of the social and economic back-
ground which determined it, is utterlyuseless.
There are fOUl" panels in [he mural [ painted in the Rectory.
The technique used was the sculptural painting .metl~od of
mosaic, and the subject was: "The people to the UnIverSIty, the
University lO the people; towards a universally valid nali~nal
neo-humanism." This was a new rype ofmural and our prcvlous
experience in paiming murals inside buildings was only
partially of praCtical help. •
External muralism provides surfaces that are rrequcOlly
concave and convex, and foreshonening musl frequently be
used if primitive styles and forms are to be avoided. 1ft had been
able to participate in the arch~tectural pl~s for the Rectory
building I would have made vanous suggesllons.
The surface of the external mural cannol properly be left
completely smooth, sculptural reliefs are necessary. Whe.n
viewed from the outside, objectively flat fonns lose their
strength when tbey are forced to compete with the th~­
dimensional forms of the trees, houses, ClC., around them. ThiS
has been understood by all the great artists of history. In view of
this I developed my sculptural paiming technique. Any
shortcomings are due 10 the complete technical novelty of this
process. You cannot become a sculptor-painter, n.or }'el a
paimer-sculptor. overnight. This is it new ~rt le~hn~que and
much time will be necessary to iron out the dlfficuilies Involved.
Colourless sculplUre has no place, either, in eXlernal murali~m.
Forms \vhich are nOl completely coloured are, paradOXical
 212 Art and Revolution
thou,gh this may sound, formless. This can also be proved by
lookIng at the an of the past. In our case, contemporary artists
were still using materials and methods which were thousands of
years old, and this in a world where scientific progress and
industrial technique had made enormous advances. Our lack of
modern materials drove us to try and solve this problem by
ancestral methods, which wert" nOladequate to modern, socially
realistic buildings. You can only find primitive solutions when
)'ou use primitive materials. There is no doubt Lhat, in spite ofall
my efforts. this is true of my Rectory mural. Perhaps electrolytic
processes will be able (0 improve £he colouring in the fUlure.
One of our achievements has been that the government has set
up tWO institutes to research into this problem.
The external mural is frequently seen by a mOlorised
spectator, and this has pro\'ided new problems ofcomposition.
The visual radius of such a spectator is infinitely greater and
more complicated than that of an indoor spectator. A
mulliangular organisation is required, because the spectator
will be seeing the work. from the mon extreme angles. I worked
on this principle, and I believe I have been partially successful.
The sculptural reliefs on this type ofmural cannOl be natically
concei\'ed as they were in the past, because that would be
contrary to the objective of the new composition in terms of an
active spectator, and also conrrary to their function of
heightening the tri -dimensional effect of the mural. The
sculpLUred forms will have to be both lengthened and
shonened, like the painting, and although this has nOt been
totally achieved it is perhaps the most novel element in my work..
The practicalities of external construction requires that the
sculpture be carried Qut in a rusr-rroof metal. I believe that in
the future they will be made 0 static aluminium soldered
lOgether, and not the reinforced cement t used in the Rectory
mural. It is a known fact that the iron used to reinforce concrete
tends to rust and this cracks the cement, which is quite a serious
problem in anisLic shapes with a precise contexture. Our
backwardness in industrial development and our economic
problems prevented me from finding a solution to this problem,
and this is why the reliefs on my mural are jmperfect.
Precepts 213
I would not advise anyone to use mosaic in external murals,
not even in the way I have done in the Rectory mural, be<:ause it
is an archaic material with all the inherent defects of such a type
of material. It is in fact a graphic process in which the colour
merely "illuminates". 1 have often said that in using mosaic you
caLi up the ghost of Byzantine art, whether you want to or not.
In external mOldl painting colour does not play the same role
that it does in easel painting, nor in internal murals. The direct
light ohhe sun, which is infinitely variable in intensity, causes a
doubly complex problem. For example: in an internal mural
pure white accentuates luminosity, in the open air its
relatjonship to the other colours make it appear to retreat and
produce the visual effect of holes or perforations. I was unable
to correct this because I was working in mosaic, which did not
permit me to do so.
In external murals even more than in internal ones, me
rracings and definite shapes are indispensable and so are the
passages from Straight lines to curves without imennediary
breaks or undulations. This causes it to be extremely schematic
which, I need hardly teU you, is not conducive to realism and
frequently obscures the ideological contenl. This does not mean
that we cannot find a solution, but it will only come from
practical experience. The public will also have to change its
viewing habits, because this is a differem type of art.
One of the most acute problems of external murals is the
problem of scale, and this has given rise to much discussion.
Some people felt that the greater size of the figures, the objects
and even the space reduced the monumental scale of the
building itself. This is false. It is quite the contrary. The use of
large. scale figures, which is inevitable irthey are to be seen from
a distance, contributes powerfully to the grandiose scale of the
building on which they are painted, by direct comparison with
the size of the human spectacor. I am today more than ever
convinced that I am right in this.
External mural ism, a historical outcome of our Mexican
muralist movement, is the mOSl positive expreSSion of artistic
tht:ory and practice today. No country in the world has ever
produced work of the size that we are producing. The
214 Art and Revolution
sculptural-painting which some European artists have been
theorising about is actually taking shape in our country. It is
undeniably new and me problems and difficulties involved are
infinite. All of us are involved in searching for solutions in this
vilat new field of arl, while the anist5 of the School of Paris and
the "vanguard" tendencies ~re still intelleclualising in the field
of mutilated subjectivity, a subjectivity which has been divorced
from its objective body.
1956 (AnswerJ to Raqutl Tibol in an interview published In th£
5upplmltnt "Mexico en ia cullura~' of the paper Novedades,
AugttJt J ,(h, 1956, undtr the title "SiqlUiroJJormulat(J problerru
regarding realism ")
Realism, by which I mean objectivity in painting, cannot be
limited. It is, on the contrary. a dialectical system with infinite
possibilities. And if it is remembered that those who apply it are
men ora socialist, i.e. scientific, turn ofmind, it must be accepted
that it will necessarily go much deeper than it has in the past. In
the past realism was conceived as a problem ofdirect objectivity;
a primary imelJectual effon which made the theory and praaice
of realism much easier. In paiming a ponrait we were in the
position of imitating-we are not afraid of the word-the
physical and psychological aspects of a given person. In such a
case, the greater the exactitude of the replica, the greater the
value of the work. A portrait must be a portrait in the widest
sense of the teon: we must get rid of sophisms, such as that a
portrait does not have to be a ponrait but only the capriciOUS
artistic interpretation by the artist. Wbat we want to know is
whether a painter who has decided to be a realist can u~ in
certain given cases the solution of direct objectivity.
Another specific problem refers to the indirect portrait, the
physical, psychological and sometimes political portrait of a
person who is dead or absent, pa.inted from mort': or less
authentic documems or references. Because this is a totally
different problem, the technique cannot be {he same as that
used in direct portraiture. The objective difficulties in this case
cannot be solved as an artistic advemiJre; this must be the point
of view ofall realist painters, particularly social-realists.
Precepts 215
I believe that the problem of non-imitative mental objectivity
in landscape painting is a totally new problem. J n all types of
painting, even the most imaginatively fantastic, landscapes have
always been expressa:! in elements which might have been seC'n;
therefore they have alwa)·s been imitatively objective. BUI we
cannot deny that there exist in nature things which we cannot
perceive, although our intelligence can conceive of their existing
and, therefore, being depicted. For example, geographical
regions which are so inaccessible that even the strongest
telescope would nOt be able (0 see them. I do not think that it is
possible to be '1uite as lyrical, quite as rom.antic, about
landscapes in the age of the airplane as men were before they
had domina.ted space. This need for a cosmic landscape is part
of our new nature. Mental objectivity is a solution for more than
landscapes which are beyond our field of vision; many problems
of volume can be bener solved mentally than visually. It can be
deduced from this that the mental understanding of problems
modifies the concept of objectivity, which in the plastic arts has
been of a primary, simplistic mechanical kind. The cubists
wanted to solve this problem, bUl they limited themselves to
undmtanding fruit dishes, bottles, guitars, coffee mills, etc. In
representing these objects they used logical objective and visual
perception. But in depicting landscapes they merely obsen:ed
what could be seen from a real or imaginary window.
Some anists have been led, by an idea of reaJism which was
toO superficial, to exclude all the elements offantasy. The realist
imagines because he needs greater objectivity; his fantasy
attempts to foresee things which he may have to deal with.
Leonardo da Vinci painted or drew his fantasies which were
based on certain scientific principles. The progress of physiCS
and biology aJlow us to produce more far-reaching fantasies,
and we must neither reject nor ignore this possibility. Thisfuturt
objtclivity, to coin a leon, is both constructive and of evident
utility in political action. Here is a way in which the realist field
of operations, today so provincially shut in, could be widely
increased.

216 Art and Revolution
1957 (From the article "Defence ~ Mexican Public Art", publukd in
the 5upplement "Diorama de La cultura", oj the newspaper
Excelsibr. February 14th, 1957)
tn the Soviet Union, over which I travelled widely in 1956. the
problem of realism and, in particular, social realism is
frequently under discussion. Proof of this is to be found in the
statement made by the Minister of Culture, Mr. Nicolas
Mikhailov, in answer (0 my question as (0 why my Open Leuer
lO the painters, sculptors and engravers of the Soviet Union \\'as
never published. His words were textually as follows: "You well
know-as do other artists from abroad whose \·jews and
practices of social realism do nOI coincide "'1th those of the
members of the Soviet Union of Painters-that we ask )'ou
visitors to do more than just praise the positive side ofour work,
we also ask you to criticise, as emphatically as you can, the
negative side. I might also add that here in the Soviet Union we
make use of self-criticism to a degree unknown in the capitalist
"'·orld." I found OUt afterwards that my criticism of the
academism of Soviet painters had given rise to much
controversy, but had not been published in the magazine
SovidsAa)'a Cultura because Alexander Gerasimov, who at that
time was president of the Soviet Union of Painters, had been
against its publication. An article entitled "An and Culture"
written in Moscow by Ralph Parker and published in the Roman
magazine II Conttmporanto, on September 19th, 1956, said the
following: "Siqueiros' Open Letter to the Soviet artists. which
he read during a session of the Soviet Art Academy, has aroused
great interest in the artistic world ofthe U.S.S.R," And it could
hardly be otherw·ise in a country where opinions are always
being re-examined and where the government has been 10
favour of public an for more than thirty years; OUf Mexican
contemporary art movement provides it with a most useful
source of experience.
In lndia I found a government under the leadership ofMr.
Nehru, which had the most profound and widest knowledge of
our an movement, and through it had accepted all the solid
social achievements of our country. Forty-eight hours before I
Precepts 217
arrived to a tumultuOUS welcome, Prime Minister NehnJ had
said: "The Government of India is spendingenonnoussums on
building and there is no reason why it should not spend a little
more on public art, This would be of col.le~ti~e bene~t and
would contribU[c to the promolion of artIStic mterest m the
people, and would also s~imula~e our artists, At this time: artists
are not sufficiently mouvated m our coun~l")', I~ ,MexiCO the
mural painters merit more ~espect than ~helr pollflcallea,ders.
Why is this? Because in MexICO mural pamlers have esta~li5?ed
permanemcontact with the people. Works of art are .not h~lIted
toan galleries and thus shut off from the people; the I~hab.lta~ts
of even the smallest villages receive the content of their pamong
and know the fame of the artists. These paintings cannot be
moved aboul from wall to waH; they are a spiritual pan of me
building on which they are painced, Our great ani.stic tradition
here in India shows us the intimate connecuon between
architecture, sculpture and painting, our~ is an a~ ~th a public
mission and not produced for the exclUSIVe a~d IOtlI~ate sol~Cf'
of our princes. Our tradition, in accordancewnh the l.deolo~~ca.I
realities of the time, "''35 to elevate the people, But this [Tadwon
was lost, and we now frequently see hybrid work ab~ut us, My
most feJVent desire is to use every means at my dIsposal to
foment a type of public an such as we had during the b~t
periods of our history. I woul? like to .take advantage of,thls
occasion to announce the proximate arrival of a great Mexican
mural painter, to our country, Mr. Siq~eiros." .
Could there be any clearer declaration th~t ~ur MeXlca~ art
movement is an outstanding example of artistic work dUTIng a
time of social transformation? India, with its great old
traditions, the cradle, together with Egypt, of world cu1tur~,
appreciates the significance of our theory of a new ,state art, In
the superior democratic traditions of th~ future. ItlS ,a country
which. conscious of its past, and evolVing towards us fUlUr.e,
maintains permanent workshops near its s:eat monumen,ts.' m
order to keep them in a good state of repair, so that the VISltor
who comes LO the temples and palaces, flOds everything
complete, the sculptures and the cornices: th~ capi~s and bases
of the columns, and even the polychromlOg IS repalred as soon
218 Art and Revolution
as it has become faded by me sun. This is why I was affectionately
applauded when I said that if the Venus of Milo had been
discovered in India, it would have been easy to provide her \\1th
arms.
1960 (From a lecture delivered on January 9th, 1960, in the emtral
University of CarMal)
In my case, I have never put theory before practice. I derive
my theory from my paiming. Theory emerges from what one is
actually doing.
The proprietor ofan an gallery, the Plaza An Centre, a typical
bourgeois Yankee, look me to one side and said: "I wam you (0
paim a mural here, 30 yards long and l:l yards high; as you
know my gallery is situated in the Mexican sector of Los
Angeles, a city where half a million Mexicans live, most of them
workers or office employees." This was a magnificent
opportunity fOT me. The proprietor then said; "Of course, this
is on condition that you accept the subject I have chosen, which
is 'Tropical America'." without hesitation, I asked him to draw
up the contract and I signed it. This gentleman, like the good
Yankee capitalist that he "'las, had spent all night thinking up his
subject. His idea of "Tropical America" was a continent of
happy men surrounded by palm trees and parrots, where the
fruit dropped off lhe trees right into the moulhs of the happy
mortals who lived there. But I painted a man who had been
crucified on a double o-OSS, and perched proudly on top of the
cross was the eagle seen on American coins. Because of this I was
I called Hearst-Hitler and were able to parade it before millions
expelled from lhe United States. But my mural had done its job.
My mural was the mural ofa Mexican painter who had fought in
the Revolution and who knew that his first duey was to his
ideology.
Of course, I was not the only painter to take up !.his position.
Orozco was asked by the Inslitute for Social Research of New
York to paint on their walls me panorama of the contemporary
social world. He painted Mahalma Gandhi, Lenin, Stalin,
Carrillo Puerto and crowds of starving Mexicans; his painting
was a symbol of the international fighl against imperial ism. His
work was respected for some time because it was painted on the
Precepts 219
walls of the Social Research Instinne, (it was painted in 1933, at
about the same time that I painted my murals in Los Angdesl,
bUllaler it was covered.
Anyone might ask: Why paint murals with such subject
matter when the most important thing is to save the work ofart?
And my answer is that it was more .important to fu.[fil the
objecti\'es of our movement, our ,:"uralisl movement which was
directly concerned in the proletanan and popular ba~tles of our
era. if political conditions do nOI respond to the subject matter
of our murals, then we must join the workers and all the people
of these countries and fight to achieve the right conditions. It
would have been a simple mauer for me to have painted a
harmless mural in Los Angeles, a fantasy, a dream, or beuer
still, a nightmare. In that way, I would not have had any
problems, because no matter how horrible my nightmare. I
would not have been expelled from the United States on ItS
account, nor would I have had to go to the Argentine so
urgently.
For more than a year the Siqueiros E:"perimental Workshop
was a workshop at the service of the working c1ass.of the Uniled
Siaies through the direct agency of the Communist Party. Our
workshop undertook all the art work needed fo; the
propaganda put OUt by the revol.utionary move~ems III the
States. We even built the allegoncal floats used 10 the mass
demonstrations on May IS(. We once built an allegorical boat
of New Yorkers who were escaping from the heat of New York
on the beaches of Coney Island. We did not feel tha.1 this (yp~ of
activity affected at all our "angelic" creative capaaey ~s arus~s.
We used the most advanced mechanical means at our dIsposal In
carrying out this propaganda ~Tt work. ~nd. I bdieve we were
able to make important techOical contributions, now used by
non.figurative artists who do not believe in social realism and
who even try 10 destroy what they call the "dema~oguery"ofrhe
Mexican movement. In our search for techmques we made
prime use in our paintings of the artistic accident; which i.n our
search for new forms we transformed into figurative art with an
intensive realist purpose. We were able to make enormous
 220 Art 8nd Revolution
photographic enlargements, up to 36 feet high, thanks (0 the
relative cheapness of American technique. These murals were
reproduced by the thousand and sent to workers' organisations
all ~ver the States. It still moves me to remember the applause
whICh greeted the portraits of American CommuniSI leaders in
Madison Square Garden. Each of these portraits covered 108
S<Juare metres. and were enlarged from an original photograph
which only measured g square metres.
1960 (From lk lutuu dtliVOtd on January I fth. 1960, Ul
MWtum of FJlu ATtS. CaracaJ, Vmnuela)
The in{eri~r mural is,tOlally different from the easel painting,
~nd ~e extenor mural IS even more different with regard to the
lnte~lo: mural. It is a totally different profession in which new
speCialists ~USt be formed. It is a complex problem, because we
are faced with a new phenomenon of figurative an, from which
it w?uld be senseless to exclude man's image. It might be
pOSSible to exclude the image of man from a small decorati\'e
work. the function of which was merely ornamental. Non.
figurative art has always existed. but in earlier times it has never
been the ~nal work, the ",:,'ork itSelf, but merely the frame of this
work. ThiS was the funCtIon of decorative borders in all ancient
sculplure, including that of the pre-Hispanic era. What did
these .ornamental borde~s represent? They did not rep"escnl
anY~lOg, they were nOthmg more than anistic pat[cms. What
else IS the Baroque in both painting and sculpture but great
ro~s in .movement which do not represent any concrete.
speCific thing. There has always been a desire 10 ornament, to
decorate. and [~is has a plastic value of its own. Is therc anyone
unable to pcrcelve the dlfferem nervous commotion set up by a
wavy line and a broken line? In the same way black and yellow
set u~ a. different pictorial sensation than we get from a
comblllauon of red and green. II cannot be denied that all this
en.ables an artist to produce the most extraordinarily beautiful
ulIngs. But the question arises: is this the desideratum of artistic
creation p<lrtic.ularly a~ a time like the present revolutionary
mOment In Latin Amenca? A§ we developed ourpublicarl, with
our mural painting and our prints, people would ask us: "But
Precepts 221
al'e you going to Stay with figurative art for ever?" And we used
to answer: "Of course we are, unless we are stopped from doing
so, in which case we shall stop painting." After this we get the
sectarian "the human figure should not be copied any more; it
was done so •....ell in the past that no one could improve on it".
When? Why? And on the ocher hand, the human figure has
never been copied, nor has general reality. Nothing has ever
been cfJjJitd. No one can "copy" the human figure. And those
who thought they could, have failed. Who says that reality can
the be transplanted? Reality cannor be tTansplamoo because it
depends on contact, on the feelings ofevery artist or every group
of artists who identify with each other in a common cause. There
is no need to insin and to bring proof of how reality has been
recreated by artists during the great periods orthe history of art.
We found it necessary to use figurative art in order to say
important r.hings to the people. It would have been a simple
matter for us to ha\'e forsaken figurative an in our murals. Why
not? You will say to me: "And couldn't you have painted an
important non· figurative work?" We could have done. bur .....e
did not want to, we were not imerestro in doing so. Non·
figurative art would have been useless for our purpose. It would
have been out of keeping \\'ith our inner selves and our long
experience of political life. Non.figurative an as plastic
gymnastics. a unilateral exercise of the artistic impulse? Yes.
that is something I quite often do; I do it whenever I feel like it,
but it is not fundamemalto my work; I often paint innocuous
little pieces, but all this is by way of limbering up for my
important artistic work. And if you were to say to me: "You are
not 10 paint the human figure any more, we don't want to see
anything recognisable in any of your pictures," I would simpl)'
say. no. And if it were a decree, an inviolable law, I would Simply
give up painting and become a carpentel' or something.
Because we believe in the freedom of artistic expression, we
have never tried to impose our artistic line on anyone else, and
whoever says the opposite is guiiLy of slander. Of course, we
defend our art passionately, but that is very different from trying
to impose it on albers. It has been said that I have declared that
"ours is the only way". J have said that, and I believe that every
222 Art and Revolution
artist thinks this of his own an, and if he is not convinced arthat
then he is in great trouble. There is no brutal fight between us.
Our conceptual differences are not exclusive, in fact I believe we
could agree on many things. HOWlO resolve this?The man who
owns a hotel or bar should not really call on a figurative painter
of the social realism school to decorate me elegant walls of his
business; we all know that this is impossible. No one would call
on Jose Clemente Orozco to paim cruel scenes on the wall ofa
hotel. The walls of a hote! need something decorative, nOt
figurative. And on the olher hand, the headmaster of a school,
the ex.ecutive committee of a workers organisation, the
"progressive" or revolutionary governor of a Slate or province,
would hardly call on an abstract painter to decorate the walls of
a school, a trade union office or a governor's palace.
Genius and talent can never be ruled by decree. There are bad
figurative painters just as there are bad non-figurative painters:
the majority are bad. The vast majoriry of all painters are bad
painters. One of the great novelties of our times is that 3,000
masterpieces can be exhibited at the Venice Biennale, a city
where 400 years ago there may possibly have been five great
paimers. It is undeniable !.hat at every period when new
discoveries are being made, and this goes for science as much as
for an, charlatans abound. This is logical; where there is no
irrefutable proof, a charlatan is bound to appear. From this we
can deduce that most of the non-figurative paimers are
potentially charlatans. No one denies the importance of the
private laboratory, why should they? But it is something else
again, when I maintain the need for a collective laboratory for
the plastic arts. I believe it would be pedagogically superior.
Nor more than twO years ago. the painter X said to me, in
Italy: "Come and see how I paint." He said to me, with great
eloquence: "If science is reason, art is unreason, and the artist
must rid himself of all logic, all common sense, he must allow
himself to be led by his emotions alone and he must let his
unconscious govern his work; the artist must cease to analyse in
his work, his organic impulse must take over." He rook me to
his home, and hung an enormous canvas on one of the walls; his
wife then secretly arranged bowls of synthetic paint-a rapid
I Precepts 223
drying paint like the paint we Mexican muralim have been
using rOi the last thirty years-the painter had no idea where
any of the colours were. The light was turned off. He had
previously explained to me that he was going to make use of
different materials in producing his "accidents", such as
sponges, rags, steel wool, etc. Certain noises I heard in the dark
gave me to underMand that he was throwing these things al the
canvas. When the lights went on, we were both able to
appreciate a great accident, not without beauty_ And why should
it not be beautiful? There are marvellous accidents which could
move any of us to say: "Don'l touch it, leave it as ieis." He then
turned to me and told me it was my turn, and l'\'erythingwas set
up again as before. He said to me: "Let us see what mysterious
marvel of creation )'ou are going to produce, ifyou first put your
hand in the green paint instead ofthe black." 1 started throwing
the sponges and things in the direction of the cam'as. Whe~ the
light was turned on, he said: "What a wonderful abstract palmer
you are! You are wasting your time in the most foolish of ways.
Look at the difference be(Ween your picture and mine. Yours
looks like a hurricane." And I said to him: ''The fact is that I was
a pitcher when I was younger." Joking apart, the faa is that I
had thrown the objects as hard as I possibly could, and this
produced a totally differem efree!. J had not only daubed the
canvas. but the whole room. X the paimer is a very gentle man.
and he threw things very tenderly so that the effeCt was quite
different. We discussed it afterwards and both said at the same
time: "This is really most interesting."
The tremendous question as to how ami-figurative art has
been able to go to such extremes merits international
investigation as soon as possible. It is perfectly acceptable that
beautiful things can be produced by accident, involuntarily and
unpremeditatedly, just as incredibly beautiful mountain~,
valleys, deserts and rivers were produced by cosmogenic
accidents. But how is it possible to make a doctrine of this, a
brutal and sectarian doctrine? No one doubts that modern art
has produced n~' shades, new fires, new brilliances. And the~e
new elemems have doubtless been able to produce certam
psychological effects, and unexpected aesthetic sensations. In
224 Art and Revolution

this sense, and in this sense alone. there has been some utility.
But there is room in our work for all the daring experiments of
the abstracts, and for lots morc too, which the unilaleraliry of
their dOCLrine prevents them from finding.
Of late the Mexican government, under pressure [mm
ourselves, has been obliged to censure the use which the
Organisation of American States, with its official seat in
Washington, has made orehe money which it receives from all
rhe countries or America; it has used these funds co propagate
the abstract trends in art and to combat the public art of tbe
Mexican an movement What right has ina do trus? Tfit were to
use its money to propagate realist art, the Abstract palmers
would have full rights to complain. The QAS nas no right to
interfere in our aesthetic affairs, or in our national politics. It IS
very significant that at this Lime no figurative artist of the social-
revolutionary trend has been invited to exhibit his works in the
United States. Js it not extraordinary that the Museum of
Modern Art in New York has seen fit to eliminate these painters
from their publications? It is obvious that imperialism prefel's
an an which is deaf and dumb, an art which says nothing, hears
nothing, and even sees nothing. But this does not mean thal we
deny the right of any painter to experiment in any way he likes.
He has the right to do this and th~ right to defend his principles
and his pOint of view in public; but he does nOt have the right to
help lhe forces of reaction to drown out the voices of those 01" us
who do want to say something with our painting, or to join
those forces in shutting our mouths by taking awayour liberties.
What are we fighting for at the presem time? ATe the abstract
anisLS, the non-figurative artists, fighting for the freedom of
expression? It is we, the figurative artists who have ideological
links with our people, who are fighting for this.