Alongside Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco was one of Los Tres Grandes – fathers of Mexican muralism who broke away from traditional styles of European painting. At that time, art was confined to private institutions and reserved for the elite. The muralists sought to make art accessible to the public. They also differed in constantly addressing political and social issues and often depicting harrowing scenes of violence and colonialism.
Muralism reached its height in post-revolutionary Mexico. Inspired by the monumental sculptures and stone engravings of the ancient Aztecs and Mayans, the muralists highlighted a pre-Columbian history that helped their country forge its new identity.
Omniscience (1925)
Here, omniscience - the state of having acquired all the knowledge in the world - is represented by a half-man, half-woman being.
El Hijo del Ahuizote
José Clemente Orozco was accepted into the Academy of Fine Arts in San Carlos while still in grade school. Like Picasso, he was the youngest student but was already more talented than his teachers.
At the start of the Mexican Revolution, Orozco found work as a cartoonist for El Hijo del Ahuizote (The Son of the Ahuizote), a newspaper that often targeted politicians and greedy businessmen. With a rich tradition of political satire, publications, such as El Ahuizote, were how most people learned of important issues regarding the revolution and the government.
Congressional Cinema (1913)
- an anti-Madero cartoon in El Ahuizote criticizing his pro-U.S. stance and refusal to ratify land reformations.
La Casa de las Lágrimas
Orozco wanted to break away further from his formal art education and European painting, so he visited Mexico City’s segregated district where the impoverished lived to find his subjects. He worked on a series of watercolors and among them was House of Tears, which portrays the women who worked as prostitutes and the hardships they faced.
When he had his first solo exhibition in 1916, the House of Tears series drew the most attention and criticism. Even though the paintings are sensitive and melancholy, they shocked conservative circles who felt the subject of prostitution was too immoral to be on display.
Eleven Women (c. 1915)
Mexican Mural Renaissance
In 1923, Orozco and six other artists, Rivera and Siqueiros among them, received a government commission for a series of murals. Spearheaded by the Secretary of Education, José Vasconcelos, the murals were to portray historical and cultural themes for the benefit of the majority of the Mexican population who were illiterate and had no access to education or history books. They began work at La Prepa (the National Preparatory School) and continued to several other federal buildings and public spaces.
Again, some of Orozco’s subjects were deemed offensive. In Maternity, an unclothed woman with blond hair holding a baby was taken for the Virgin Mary and angered the Damas Católicas (Catholic Ladies), a group of ultra-conservative upper-class women. They also felt Christ Chopping Down His Own Cross was blasphemous and demanded the paintings be removed. When officials did nothing, the ladies took sheets and covered the panels. In his next painting, The Rich People, Orozco portrays the ladies as caricatures, further infuriating them.
Maternity (1924)
Orozco explained this is of a mother and child, not the Madonna. Art critics hailed it as a comparison to Botticelli's Birth of Venus.
Cortéz and Malinche (1926)
Malinche was Cortéz's mistress and translator and a controversial figure in Mexican history - many see her as a traitor while others see her as much a victim.
Los Horrores de la Revolución
In 1926, Orozco received a commission for six illustrations to be exported to the U.S. and published in a book about the Mexican Revolution. Drawing on his experience traveling with the army from 1913 to 1916 for the journal La Vanguardia, he worked on sketches, lithographs and easel paintings that amounted to a lengthy series past the initial six.
Unlike Rivera and Siqueiros, who painted romanticized images of the revolution, Orozco depicted its atrocities. Works such as The Rape, The Hanged Man and Common Grave are graphic and disturbing. While Rivera and Siqueiros often focused on ideological aspects and glorified populist leaders as heroes, neither the revolutionary soldiers nor the pro-government officials escaped Orozco’s wrath and criticism, “the Revolution was farce, drama, barbarity and buffoons trailing after so-called gentlemen of noose and dagger.” Fearing the public’s reaction, The Horrors of the Revolution were kept hidden until they could be exported.
The Rape (1928)
In Mexico, he was seen as bourgeois and anti-revolutionary when they were finally revealed. In the U.S., they were seen as depressing and further fueled the prejudice of those who believed Mexico was nothing more than a savage, violent and war-torn culture. But critics and historians would later commend his objective stance and call him the “conscience of his generation.” The drawings are now seen as equivalent to photojournalism and comparable to another seminal work of art – Goya’s Disasters of War.
The General’s Wedding (1928)
- portrays an abducted girl forced to be a bride. It was suggested that it be renamed The General's Return as a positive portrayal of a bride perhaps weeping at her husband's wooden leg.
U.S. Commissions
Pomona College
In 1930, Orozco was offered his first mural commission in the U.S. It was amid the Great Depression, and upon arriving at Pomona College, he was told that, unfortunately, funding was not available. Despite being in a dire economic situation himself, he replied, “Never mind that. Have you got a wall?” He was immediately given one – a 25′ by 35′ recessed arch – over a fireplace in the dining hall.
Here, he chose the hero Prometheus. He had listened to a series of lectures based on the Greek play Prometheus Bound and was inspired by the tragedy. When Abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock saw the mural, he declared it “the greatest painting in North America.” He channeled it in his own paintings, including Flames (1936), Angular Forms (1938) and Red Arc and Horses (1938).
Prometheus (1930)
- the Titan who defied the gods, stole fire for mankind, and was punished for eternity.
New School for Social Research
Soon after, Orozco received another commission from the New School for Social Research in New York. Their only condition was that his subjects were to be contemporary but of such great importance that they would become part of history books and still be remembered in a hundred years.
In Table of Brotherhood, an African-American man sits at the head of the table with a Jewish man on one side, a Mexican Indian on the other, and surrounded by representatives of different ethnicities – an idealized view of the brotherhood of man. Orozco believed that world peace was unattainable unless all people were treated equally.
Table of Brotherhood (1931)
His exploration of class division and the racial discrimination he witnessed inspired a generation of African-American artists, including Jacob Lawrence, whose Migration of the Negro (1940-1941), a series of 60 paintings, depicts the great migration of African-Americans from the South beginning in 1910. John Wilson’s Streetcar Scene (1951) and The Trial (1951) also credit Orozco. Wilson identified with him as “one of those people who felt the sense of not being part of official society and depicting all of the horrendous ways that society has invented to keep it that way.”
In Struggle in the East, Gandhi, peaceful and dignified, sits in opposition to the British Empire. In Struggle in the Occident, he divides a mural depicting the Mexican Revolution on the left and the Russian Revolution on the right. Because the murals portray Lenin and Stalin, they angered many patrons but also gained new, more liberal supporters for the school. When the Soviet Union allied with the U.S. during WWII, the criticism of their leaders died down momentarily.
Struggle in the Occident (1931)
Dartmouth College
In 1932, Orozco accepted a faculty position at Dartmouth College. He was to teach the elements of fresco painting while allowing the students to observe him at work. At that time, few art curriculums included the work of living artists. He taught classes while completing his murals in the school’s newly-opened Baker Library. Epic of American Civilization is an intricately layered depiction of the history of the continent. It encompasses 24 panels, and the story is divided into two parts. The first, The Coming of Quetzalcoatl, depicts life in Mesoamerica before Europeans arrived.
The Coming of Quetzalcoatl (1934)
- the serpent god of wisdom who brought science and art and ushered in the Golden Age of the Aztec Empire.
When Quetzalcoatl is defeated and banished by his older brother, Tezcatlipoca, he vows to come back and take his revenge. In the second part of Epic, The Return of Quetzalcoatl, he is reincarnated as Hernan Cortéz, the bloodthirsty conquistador who subjugates the indigenous population. Colonial rule is marred by violence and chaos, with machines feeding on the bodies of murdered natives. In Modern Human Sacrifice, the body of a dead soldier is trapped under the flag of nations.
Modern Human Sacrifice (1934)
- no less barbaric and even more efficient than the Aztec tradition of Ancient Human Sacrifice, which is also depicted on a panel in the first part of Epic.
Modern Industrial Man (1934)
- a utopian vision of the future on a series of the final five panels. Here, Orozco shows man being served and saved by machinery and learning.
Again, the murals had plenty of critics who demanded Dartmouth revise them. But the college stood by Orozco. In fact, in 1935, the year after they were completed, the WPA created the Federal Art Project (FAP) and hired visual artists to work on its own government initiatives and public spaces. Orozco’s murals would directly influence numerous projects, including Ben Shahn’s Roosevelt Homestead (1938, Camden Post Office), which depicts Jewish immigrants on their journey from Eastern Europe, and Charles Alston’s Magic and Medicine (1940, Harlem Hospital), which depicts traditional healing practices from Africa.
Return to Mexico
Palacio de Bellas Artes
In 1934, after seven years in the U.S., Orozco returned to Mexico City to begin work on the newly inaugurated opera house (now the Palace of Fine Arts). In stark contrast to the final panels at Dartmouth, Catharsis is a dystopian vision in which humanity is destroyed by industrialization and conflict. Disembodied soldiers, prostituted women and angered protesters are ravaged by fire, weapons and all-out violence. Orozco was distrustful of Mexico’s post-revolutionary government, which he saw as being just as corrupt, and expressed this in the first painting after his return.
Catharsis (1934)
- conflict and decay in the machine age.
Museo de las Artes
Beginning in 1936, he received succeeding commissions in Guadalajara, where he was born on the coast just outside the city. The first was at the State University of Jalisco. On the cupola of the auditorium, which is now part of Museum of the Arts (MUSA), is Man the Creator and Rebel. The figures symbolize the noblest of men – the scientist’s head faces in all directions, seeking knowledge, the worker rises, and the teacher and rebel unite in thought and action. They are all interconnected in the progress of mankind.
Behind the stage, The People and Their False Leaders is a commentary on the failed ideologies of the socialist revolution. Here, men of power, Marx and Trotsky among them, are wielding books and daggers, while the masses of common people are nothing but ghosts of men – still starved and helpless.
The People and Their False Leaders (1937)
Palacio de Gobierno
The following year, Orozco painted frescos for the Governor’s Palace, a Spanish Colonial building serving as the seat of government. Over the grand staircase, he paid homage to the legendary Father Hidalgo, a Catholic priest, teacher and prominent leader of the freedom movement. The scene depicts the “cry of Dolores” when, on September 16, 1810, Hidalgo rang his church bells as a call to arms, inciting the Mexican War for Independence. A second mural on the upper floor portrays Father Hidalgo issuing a decree on December 6, 1810, which abolished slavery.
Hidalgo and National Independence (1939)
Hospicio Cabañas
Orozco’s true crowning achievement would come when he was chosen to paint the chapel of Hospicio Cabañas. The hospice’s founder, Bishop Juan Ruiz de Cabañas, wanted the building to represent his belief in public welfare and social justice. At that time, it was used as an orphanage for over 500 children.
The Dartmouth commission, The Epic of American Civilization, was already considered a masterpiece. But even that doesn’t compare. Here, Orozco would paint the story of The Spanish Conquest of Mexico on 57 panels.
The entrance hall begins with indigenous cultures – depicting both the social hierarchy and barbaric rituals of ancient civilizations. On the ceiling vaults, we see their defeat and enslavement when the Spanish came. There are three prominent figures – Hernan Cortéz, again, as a soulless soldier, with the angel of death above him and bloodied corpses below; Philip II, the devout Catholic king under which the Spanish Empire reached its height amassing riches and converts; and a Franciscan Priest, who in the beginning had championed education, equality and salvation, but became no less brutal and even just as greedy as the conquistadors of the new world.
The Wars of the Conquest (1939)
Hernan Cortéz as a heartless killing machine and the Wheel of Time.
The Dictators (1939)
- bringing in weapons of war and destruction.
There are also heroic symbols. Huichilobos, the patron god of the Mexica tribe, stands regal and indestructible. There are portraits of Cervantes, Orozco’s favorite writer, and El Greco, his favorite painter. The Wheel of Time, with layers of history underneath, continues towards progress. Filling the cupola, Man of Fire symbolizes the creative mind, forever striving for enlightenment. Surrounded by air, earth and water, he ascends through the flames.
Man of Fire (1939)
Fresco Painting and Orozco
Fresco, meaning “paint” in Italian, has been traced to Ancient Greece and the walls of Pompeii. It was revived in the 15th and 16th centuries by Raphael, Michelangelo and other Renaissance painters. It’s executed by painting directly on fresh plaster so that the plaster and paint dry simultaneously and become part of the wall itself. Because plaster dries in less than a day, only the part of the wall that can be painted each day is plastered. It is a technique that leaves no room for mistakes. Once the plaster dries, it isn’t possible to make changes.
On top of that, painting on curved surfaces, such as vaults and arches, can make figures – people and body parts especially – look disproportionate. Orozco would study the space, create detailed sketches, and even draw true-to-size on paper to prepare for the murals. His studies in architecture and structural engineering were no doubt helpful.
Landscape of the Peaks (1943)
Other than Catharsis, The Spanish Conquest of Mexico were the first Orozco murals I saw. But I didn’t really know much about them until I visited his workshop and an art historian guide told me the story, not just of the murals, but also of the painter. While Orozco was studying architecture, his father died, and he had to leave the university. They were very poor, and when he was 21 and working at his uncle’s workshop selling fireworks, one of them exploded. He lost his left hand, and only at the insistence of a family friend did the doctor save his right hand rather than amputate it.
Orozco’s Workshop
Yes, these murals – so detailed I have spent hours staring at them – were painted singlehandedly. I couldn’t believe it. Every day was a race against time, and some of the scaffoldings were quite high – the dome of Hospicio Cabañas measures 23 meters. Of all the curved spaces he painted, not a single figure is out of proportion, no matter from which angle you’re seeing them. The accident also permanently damaged his hearing and eyesight, so he had to wear thick glasses – the iconic glasses that became part of his signature as seen on his paintings.
Even though his disability was obvious, he made sure never to bring any attention to it. One story goes that when he was painting the walls of La Prepa, another artist’s assistant offered to help. Orozco replied, “With my arm, it’s enough,” and proceeded to paint an entire part in one stroke. Only after he died did the biographies reveal how exhausting the work was for him and how self-conscious he was of his own disabilities. Neither he nor his art ever showed it.
