David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros is one of the three titans of Mexico’s politically fueled modern mural painting art. Along with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, Siqueiros’ work was as revolutionary in its artistic impact as it was in its political intention. Born in Chihuahua, in 1896, Siqueiros joined the Mexican Revolutionary Army at age 17 when the Mexican Revolution began in 1910. As an attaché for the Mexican delegation in Paris, Siqueiros refined his communist political ideas, and at the same time absorbed the contemporary art movements in France. He came back to Mexico in 1922 to lead the Syndicate of Technical Works, Artists and Sculptors, as well as found El Machete, the artists’ union magazine devoted to a “peoples’ art.” His manifestos included an attack on easel painting as politically elitist and artistically irrelevant. In the 30’s, Siqueiros went into exile, traveling to South America, the Soviet Union, and to the United States, where he produced a number of murals, including the Portrait of Mexico in Los Angeles (currently in the collection of the Santa Barbara Museum of Art). In 1937, Siqueiros joined the Spanish Republican Army in the Spanish civil war. Today, his most well know works include the murals at the National Preparatory School, Mexico City (1922–24), Plaza Art Center, Los Angeles (1932; destroyed), the large Liberation of Chile, at the Escuela Mexico, Chillán, Chile (1942), New Democracy, at the National Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico City (1945), a series at the Polytechnic Institute, Mexico City (1952); and what is perhaps his most significant work, The March of Humanity (1968) at the Hotel de Mexico, Mexico City. Siqueiros also has another kind of place in history: he led an attack on Leon Trotsky’s house in Mexico City, while Trotsky was in exile. Trotsky was assassinated three months later. Siqueiros died in 1974.
