Mexican Muralism

At the end of the Mexican Revolution the government commissioned artists to create art that would educate Mexicans, who could not read, about their history. 

The muralists developed an iconography featuring atypical, non-European heroes from the nation’s illustrious past, present, and future and epic murals were created on the walls of highly visible, public buildings using techniques like fresco, encaustic, mosaic, and sculpture-painting.

Although the mural movement stretched all the way through the 1970s, the Mexican muralists produced the most significant paintings in the years between the 1920s and the 1950s. 

Undisputed by the state, it was public and free and it was made accessible to the people and not just a few wealthy collectors. These large-scale paintings graced the walls of centuries-old colonial buildings, prestigious schools and national offices, as they depicted indigenous Mexican culture, the fighting and the outcome of the Revolution.

The muralists were completely free in their choice of topic and technique, as they all believed art is the highest form of human expression, and because their murals carried a political message, Mexican muralism became a form of social realism at its finest.

After the Mexican Revolution, the country saw the creation of a new party and the land was finally in the hands of its own workers. Mexican muralism became a vital part of the country’s new industrialist identity with the full support of those in charge of it. 

This movement proved that art could be a valid communication tool outside the confines of the gallery and museum.

The artists portrayed the Aztec warriors battling the Spanish in their fight for independence, humble peasants fighting in the Revolution, and the common laborers of Mexico City. They worked in the country’s urban areas and were prominent political activists overall, dedicated to creating a modern Mexico. Their communist backgrounds and the respect for Marxism and class struggle were often visible in their murals, although always subtly and never quite radically.

Although the early Mexican murals were inclined toward the favouring of Socialism - as did its most important artists including Diego Rivera - they would evolve over time to also favourably portray the industrial revolution, the progress of technology, and capitalism and today the mural's role as a key gauge of current events cannot be denied.

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