After the 1910 Mexican Revolution, a movement of muralists and artists arose that depicted the class inequalities and historic suffering of the Mexican peasants and workers. Much of this art took a clear political line that identified with these oppressed sectors and condemned the country’s ruling class. They identified closely with the concept of indegenismo—which saw Mexico’s Indigenous roots as a source of pride and strength—and thus constituted a sharp departure from the racist concepts projected by the country’s political, economic and cultural elites.
 Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera |
Three of the leading painters in this movement were Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, the latter two specializing in public mural art.
Although not every muralist was a self-proclaimed revolutionary—José Clemente Orozco, another leading figure, was profoundly pessimistic about the direction of the country and often depicted the Spanish conquistadores in a positive light—the genre constituted a break from the bourgeois conception of “high art.” Displayed on public buildings and streets, owned by no one, murals made the work of the country’s most talented artists free and accessible to everyone passing by.
The murals told stories of the country’s past, upheld the work of the common woman and man, and showed glimpses of what a better society could be like. When they portrayed life under capitalism, they always emphasized its exploitative nature. Rivera, Siqueiros and Kahlo—whose work was more personal—proudly promoted socialism as the answer.
In the 1920s, Rivera and Siqueiros were both prominent members of the Communist Party of Mexico. Later, conflicts over the Soviet Union and the Stalin-Trotsky divide played a major role in the muralists’ political lives. Rivera broke with the CPM and for a period became a close associate of Leon Trotsky. For his part, Siqueiros led an assassination attempt on Trotsky in April 1940, machine-gunning his house in Mexico and abducting one of his guards (who was later found dead).
Despite their intense political differences, both communist muralists shared a common purpose with their artistic productions. While the communists of course produced literature to speak to and organize the working-class, many Mexican peasants and workers were entirely illiterate. Art helped expand the political message to such sectors, communicating in a way that was simple and instantly understandable.
This approach—oriented to the masses—extended to the murals’ productive process, as well as its finished product. Both Rivera and Siqueiros referred to the process of creating murals as a sort of “team painting,” which like a revolution needed many workers to carry through.
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros was very active in leftist politics for much of his life and was a member of the Communist Party. In 1923, he helped found El Machete, the paper for the union of painters, sculptures and engravers in Mexico. He wrote many articles including a manifesto, which expressed the necessity to reach workers and peasants through art, emphasizing its collective rather than individual aspect.
In the 1930s, his involvement in the Communist Party even led to his exile from the country. It would not be the last time he suffered state repression. Throughout his life, he was often unjustly imprisoned for his politics, including in 1960 at the age of 64—prompting an international campaign calling for his release. Despite the repeated harassment from the state, as well as the commissions he lost on account of his politics, he maintained until his death in 1974 a commitment to public art as a way to spread an anti-capitalist message.
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When civil war broke out in Spain between fascist and left-democratic forces, Siqueiros—already an accomplished artist—put down his paintbrush to enlist in the anti-fascist fight. His participation in the Spanish Civil War shaped much of his work. One of the most famous paintings to represent that is “Echoes of a Scream,” which focuses on the pain of a child surrounded by bloodshed and destruction caused by the war. His contributions, through practice and through art, inspired many in Mexico to become involved with solidarity campaigns to support the anti-fascist struggle in Spain.
Siqueiros was unique in his ability to express the movement and antagonism of irreconcilable forces. He characterized his art as both a depiction of the past in connection with the present. One of his greatest masterpieces “From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz to the Revolution” captures this theme perfectly. The mural was painted in a time of political upheaval from 1957-65.
Although the mural illustrates the forces of the 1910 Mexican Revolution, there is an implicit reference to the political climate of its own time. At the height of the Cold War, President Adolfo Lopez Mateos, once a promoter of populist policies during the early years of his presidency, made a sharp shift in policy, orienting towards U.S. imperialism, and becoming extremely repressive towards the opposition. As a result of this labor unrest, strikes and political agitation grew. The left interpreted this shift as evidence that the Mexican bourgeoisie had sacrificed the country’s political and economic sovereignty to foreign capital.
The mural represents a union of opposites. On the left hand side are the main forces of the revolution, its political leaders and the masses of armed peasants. Looking closely into the crowd, we are able to recognize leaders like Zapata, Obregon, Villa and Carranza. Siqueiros’ intent was to blend these revolutionary figures in with the people, showing how they are products of the social forces from which they emerged.
On the right hand side is Porfirio Diaz, Mexico’s authoritian leader from 1876 to 1911, surrounded by luxury and his political stooges. Finally, Siqueiros’ central image is a representation of the continuing struggle for independence. We see the miners of Cananea facing off with Willian C. Green of the Green Consolidated Copper Company of America, struggling for control over the national flag of Mexico. The industrial strike at Cananea in Sonora in 1906 was an event that many mark as the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.
Finally, to encompass the political stage of the time, we see a horse that has made a sudden and abrupt stop. The stopped horse represents the stoppage or suspense of the revolution, a reminder of the internal threat of reaction and counterrevolution. Many of Siqueiros murals stressed similar points to his viewers: Mexico has achieved a lot through struggle, but, as the saying goes, the struggle continues.
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera is fairly well known in popular culture today, with attention focused as much on his personal life—notably his infidelities to Frida Kahlo—as his art. But he was also intensely political and an active communist over many decades. Rivera studied painting in Mexico before the revolution and in 1907 Porfirio Diaz himself paid for his ticket to study his craft in Europe.
Overseas when the Mexican Revolution took place, some have described his entire career as an effort to make up for his absence.
 One section of Rivera’s “Detroit Industry,” which showed in great detail the productive process of U.S. autoworkers. |
One of Rivera’s most famous and controversial works was produced in 1933, a mural at the Rockefeller Center in New York. The theme slated for this more than 1,000-square-foot work was “Man at the Crossroads Looking with Hope and High Vision to the Choosing of a New and Better Future.” This mural was meant to represent the developments in science and the discoveries made by workers over time.
The mural showed two visions of civilization, one of the rich which included night club scenes, war and a demonstration where workers were victim to police brutality. On the opposing portion, Rivera represented life in a socialist country including a May Day rally. Most controversially, he displayed a figure of Lenin shaking hands with an African American and a white Russian worker to represent hopeful allies of the future. When descriptions of the work came out in newspapers—an artist using Rockefeller’s money and space to promote an explicitly pro-communist message—his job was revoked and the mural was destroyed.
Another influential Diego Rivera mural was painted far away from his homeland, in the city of Detroit entitled “Detroit Industry.” The mural is a tribute to the industrial workers of the city and divided into three levels depicting a worker’s day. At the main level, there are variations of machines in motion and the upper level represents the geography of the city.
The mural received extensive interest especially from industrial workers themselves, for which there is a clear explanation. Rivera’s fascination with the engineering and scientific aspect of industrial machines, as well as their relationship to the laborer, made for a very detailed representation of the workers’ lives. In the hundreds, groups of workers started showing up to compliment Rivera for his extremely accurate description of their jobs. One was noted to have asked Rivera whether he was truly a painter or an engineer.
The workers were so grateful and proud of the mural that that they mobilized, from opening day to closing, a security force to protect it from right-wing forces who wanted it destroyed. Reportedly, 8,000 workers signed up to volunteer.
Frida Kahlo
 Frida Kahlo’s “Self Portrait with Cropped Hair” |
Although her personal life continues to attract the most attention in today’s popular culture, Frida Kahlo was a leading artist in her own right and contributed much to the artistic movement among Mexican leftists in the 1930s and afterwards. Her life, art and political commitments—as a proud revolutionary who called for the overturning of capitalism and patriarchy—continue to serve as a source of inspiration for Latina women in particular. She is also an early hero of the LGBT movement, as an outspoken bi-sexual woman living in a traditional, sexist and homophobic society.
Born on July 6, 1907, Kahlo was a child of the revolutionary period. She so personally identified with the revolutionary upsurge that she began to date her own birth to 1910, the year of the revolution. As a preparatory student, one of 35 girls to be admitted out of 2000, she came in contact with socialist ideas alongside other art students of her generation. During this period, she began to openly defy society’s strict gender traditions. In her early “Self Portrait with Cropped Hair,” she depicts herself having cut off her hair in a manner that would traditionally not be appropriate for a woman. She wears a suit usually tailored for men.
On September 17, 1925, Kahlo was victim to a bus accident that would change her life forever. The physical pain and personal anguish that she suffered on account of the accident became the inspiration of much of her later work.
Over time, Kahlo became more political. She often painted herself wearing indigenous attire and would also in her daily life dress as a Tehuana as a sign of solidarity with a largely oppressed community and to give a face to those who were often silenced and unrepresented in Mexican society. In one of her most famous paintings, Frida and Diego Rivera, she is dressed in this way.
Frida‘s illnesses and physical ailments never stopped her determination to use her art and last ounces of energy to promote revolution and communism. Even in her last days, in ailing health, Frida’s political drive remained strong. The last time she was seen publicly before her death was at a protest against the U.S. government and the coup d’etat of Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz. In a letter to a journalist friend, Rosa Castro, she declared:
“Unfortunately I have not been an active member because of my illness; but I have not failed to pay a single fee, nor have I failed to inform myself of every detail of the revolution and of the counterrevolution in the entire world. I continue to be a communist, absolutely, and now anti-imperialist, because our line is that of peace.”
Revolutionary artists need organization!
These revolutionaries’ lives demonstrate that there is no inherent contradiction between artistic work and political activity. Each depicted the daily injustices faced by workers. They dedicated themselves fully to the cause of revolution and used their talents to express the alienation and exploitation that characterize capitalism and to make plain the basic tenets of socialism. For them, the revolution had not been the country’s past but was also its future. Unlike those who claimed then—and today—that an artist must steer clear of political organizations, they recognized the essential importance of lending their talents to build a party of the working class.
As isolated individual artists, even supremely talented ones, their contributions would have been much more limited. Connected to and serving a living and breathing organization of the oppressed, their impact was greatly magnified.
Today, as in the past, working class and oppressed communities use cultural forms to reflect on the dire realities of the present, and advocate for a better tomorrow. Although the process of commercialization has largely detached many of these forms—from the blues, to salsa and hip hop—from their progressive roots, the oppressed will continue to express their resistance in new creative forms. The broader social struggle always stimulates new artistic movements; that is an unstoppable law of history.
As we aim to revive a revolutionary movement inside the United States, it will be critical to fuse together the creativity of revolutionary artists. Join us!
