David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974)

Read the following statement, composed, by several artists to the American Artists' Congress in New York in 1936.

Modern Mexican painting of revolutionary tendency arose a the same time as the Mexican Revolution and followed its contingencies. Thus the first unrest in art corresponded to the beginnings of social and political unrest. Toward the end of the Diaz regime, the thoughts of the artists were exclusively fixed on Europe. Their artistic tendencies reflected the mentality of the dominant feudal aristocracy. It wasnaturally that this period that unrest first appeared. The artistic unrest was manifested in the form of a movement for a folk art. Saturnino Herran, for the first time, took as his subjects scenes of popular life. In greater or lesser degree all other painters took the same path. Armed insurrection had already broken out in the North and South. In 1911 students of the School of Fine Arts—The National Academy of San Carlos—organized a strike which included economic and political as well as educational demands. It called for the abolition of academic methods and the establishment of open-air schools. They supposed that they were expressing in this way their revolutionary position. They childishly abolished the black pigment from their palette as a revolutionary protest. Our strike insinuated itself into the struggle for land for the peasants, reforms for the workers, and against imperialism, but only in a more or less general manner. We received considerable support among the students of the National University. This was converted into a general protest against the existing methods of intellectual oppression in the universities themselves, and thus our strike assumed a definitely political character. Its leaders were arrested and the demand for their liberation became a matter of national interest. Six months later came the triumph of Madero and with it the fulfillment of our most elementary demands. In this way there appeared the first open-air schools and the traditional academic methods were replaced by Impressionism.

Our Europeanism, the reflection of dying Porfirism, began to be replaced by a nationalistic aesthetic. We began to discover that Mexico had a great archaeological tradition and also a rich folklore. Works by artists who had been ignored previously now assumed a very important place in our artistic thought. The popular drawings by [Jose Guadalupe] Posada became highly esteemed; so did the paintings in the pulqerias(drinking rooms). We did not yet think about the political content of art. By 1913 there began to appear the first manifestations of social consciousness in our art with reference to workers, as, for example, in the works of Roman, Guillemin, Ortega, Furter, and many others. This social art resulted in conflicts with the Ministry of Education. The growth of the revolution converted our first open-air school into a political center. Unanimously we joined the struggle of the masses against the dictatorship of Huerta. This made it impossible for us to continue our work, and most of us entered the army of the revolution as soldiers. This fact put us for the first time in direct contact not only with the people, but also with the geography of the country. This converted the bohemian painters into a new type of artist. In a hiatus during the armed conflict of 1915 Jose Clemente Orozco and [Fransisco] Goitia produced works of art which were important for the subsequent development of our Art. Orozco's anticlerical drawings and Goitia's revolutionary scenes illuminated contemporary life, for the the Mexican youth. A little later, in 1919, the work in the School of Fine Arts was resumed, absorbing a larger part of the youth restlessness. At the same time Siqueiros was sent to Europe by a similar group of artists that had emerged, in Guadalajara. This caused the contact between the restlessness of the Mexican youth with a certain degree of mature technique in Europe which was represented by Rivera. It made it possible to publish our manifesto 'Vida Americana?American Life' which appeared in Barcelona in 1921. Here for the first time Rivera and Sequieros tried to express the theory of a muralist movement which developed a little later. This movement, however, had certain practical antecedents in a group formed by Dr. Atle called the Society of Painters and Sculptors which wanted to paint in a collective for the walls of the amphitheater of the Prepatorium.

With the appointment in 1922 of Jose Vasconcelos as minister of education the impulse toward mural painting became a reality. Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros obtained big contracts to paint murals, and various others obtained big contracts to paint smaller panels. This circumstance produced groupings among the artists. Our manifesto talked about mural art for the masses. But the moment we began our actual work, having come to mural painting as easel painters we were primarily absorbed in new technical problems. We neglected the real problems of content and created murals of neutral or socially irrelevant character. As soon as we had acquired our technique we became more conscious of the social possibilities of our work and organized our revolutionary syndicate of painters, sculptors and engravers. It was then possible to give more consistency to our political attitude. At first our political confusion was a natural consequence of the uncertainty and confusion of the Mexican revolution as a whole and also our lack of revolutionary political education. None of us had had experience with trade unions, with strikes or social struggles. We gave little thought to questions of revolutionary strategy in the placing of our works. We were at this time Utopians in our conceptions of revolutionary art with little direct contact with the masses. The appearance of the organ of our syndicate, El Machete, was the beginning of our direct contact with the organized masses, and at the same time the beginning of our conflict with the government. Our murals were in places more or less inaccessible to the masses. But the moment we began to reach the masses through our drawings and prints the government became antagonistic to us. Our first audiences were students and teachers, only intellectuals; our second audience the large masses of people. This new broadening of contact in turn reacted on us to develop our political and social views and to direct our work along new lines. At the same time around 1924 and 1925 that we were perfecting the content of our work, some of us were little by little transformed from merely passive spectators of the revolution into active participants.

[1936]