The Imagery and Aesthetics of David Alfaro Siqueiros'
Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932
Diana C. du Pont, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art,
Mexico Today, 1932 is one of three murals painted by
David Alfaro Siqueiros while he was a political refugee
in Los Angeles between April and November 1932. It is the
only surviving intact mural in the United States by the
world-renowned Mexican muralist. Street Meeting was
destroyed due to the elements and Tropical America,
due to its controversial subject matter, was whitewashed
and left abandoned for decades until the J. Paul Getty Museum
undertook to maintain it.*
on the interior walls of a semi-enclosed garden structure
in the private Pacific
Palisades home of filmmaker Dudley Murphy, Portrait
of Mexico Today, 1932, fortunately, escaped the ravages
of protest and neglect. Cared for over the years by the
Murphys and the successive owners of their home, this landmark
artwork was generously donated to the Santa Barbara Museum
of Art in 2001.
Through the additional generosity of anonymous patrons,
the Museum subsequently launched a major conservation effort
with the express goals of preserving this historic work
of art for future generations and making it available to
the public for the first time ever. As a result, Portrait
of Mexico Today, 1932 was moved intact, meaning the
painting and the entire building in which it was housed,
was moved from the Pacific Palisades.
the three murals painted by Siqueiros while he was in Los
Angeles, Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932 is direct
in its commentary on the social and political conditions
in Mexico in the early 1930s. From a position of political
exile in the United States, Siqueiros depicts his contemporary
viewpoint of his native country and its relationship to
the United States.
Wall: The long central wall presents the work's main
tableaux, two Mexican peasant women wearing traditional
rebozos (shawls) and seated on or near a stepped pyramid
with a child standing between them. Taking advantage of
the garden portico's existing architecture, Siqueiros framed
this pivotal image between two painted columns that echo
the two wooden columns that help support the structure.
To the left of
the anguished women and child is a portrait of Plutarco
Elías Calles, one of a generation of military generals who
presided over Mexico during the Revolutionary Period of
1910-1940. A dominant force both in front and behind the
scenes from 1924-34, first as president (1924-28) and then
as Supreme Chief of the Maximato (the six-year period, 1928-34,
during which Calles ruled unofficially from back rooms),
Calles is seen wearing revolutionary garb, epitomized by
the sombrero he wears and the rifle he holds perched against
his knee. Next to him are moneybags, which bear, specifically,
on the meaning of the mask that Calles has removed from
his face, but left hanging around his neck.
Wall: Again, using the building's physical configuration
to advantage, Siqueiros painted a portrait of the United
States financier, J.P. Morgan, on the small wing wall opposite
of Calles's portrait. As a result, the two portraits are
in dialogue, even if Morgan's is in profile. The images
themselves and their proximity reveal Siqueiros' interest
in addressing the relations between Mexico and the United
States in the early 1930s. At the heart of this relationship
between the two countries was oil. Mexico wished to retain
its sovereignty over oil, while United States wanted the
Mexican government to protect the ownership rights of its
businesses operating in the oil industry in Mexico. J.P.
Morgan, a symbol of US commerce, is significant, because
in 1927 Dwight Morrow, a senior partner in Morgan's famous
financial firm, was appointed ambassador to Mexico. Siqueiros,
as well as the Mexican government, understood this appointment
to be another example of the United States financial community
exerting pressure on Mexico in order to benefit economically.
Wall: Between the portraits of Morgan and Calles, Siqueiros
placed two murdered workers, blood streaming from their
mouths. By locating these corpses in between Morgan, a symbol
of U.S. economic power, and Calles, a symbol of Mexico corruption
unmasked, he dramatically expresses his view of the high
social cost of the dealings between Mexico and the United
States in the late 1920s-early 1930s. Originally a liberal,
even a radical, Calles became increasingly conservative
over his ten-year reign. As the years passed, he became
less tolerant and began using the force of the military
to suppress his foes. As a result, an increasing number
of political prisoners began filling Mexican jails. In the
case of Siqueiros, he was under house arrest in Taxco before
coming to Los Angeles for an extended stay in1932.
Wall:Adjacent to a window with a wooden shutter that
is part of the existing architecture, Siqueiros painted
an image of a Communist soldier, kneeling with his rifle
perched on his knee. By using this image, Siqueiros identifies
the Mexican Revolution with the Russian Revolution. More
specifically, Siqueiros calls attention to how Calles handled
Mexico's relations with the Soviet Union. Proactive in supporting
a growing labor movement within Mexico, Calles claimed that
he was addressing popular grievances and, thus, felt that
there was no need for a strong Communist presence within
Mexico. Eventually, Calles broke off diplomatic ties with
the Soviet Union, satisfying groups within the United States
concerned about Communist activity in Mexico. As a member
of the Communist Party in Mexico, Siqueiros opposed Calles'
anti-Communist actions--including political persecution
to which he was personally subjected--and was critical of
the Mexican leader's growing friendship with the United
States, represented specifically through the special relationship
that he built with U.S. Ambassador Dwight Morrow.
If Siqueiros believed in a modern, revolutionary art, he
was equally committed to the modernist ethic of formal and
technical experimentation. His period of political exile
in Los Angeles marked the beginning of a relentless search
for new mediums and methods intended to serve the social
purposes of his art.
restless experimentation included his use of new and/or
unconventional materials. Conversations with the Los
Angeles-based architects Richard Neutra and Sumner Spaulding
convinced Siquerios that his mural painting should relate
to the modern buildings being constructed in Southern California.
Accordingly, Siqueiros' Los Angeles murals inaugurate his
innovative use of cement rather than the traditional fresco
materials of lime and sand. In preparing to paint
Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932, Siqueiros, as in
Street Meeting and Tropical America, applied a top layer of cement to the original
plaster walls. He then painted the wet cement with
oil-based pigments, which is counter to traditional fresco
technique that uses water-based paints so that when applied
to the wet plaster the paint dries within the plaster to
become part of the wall. While Siqueiros applied the
cement in conventional fresco fashion, adhering "giornato,"
or in other words an amount that he could paint in a given
session before it dried, he ended up producing images that
rest on the surface of rather than embedded in the cement
due to the inability of oil to mix with water.
In creating his Los Angeles murals, Siqueiros also began
exploring how the newer, modern mediums of film and photography
might enrich his mural painting. Critical to this
development in Siqueiros' work were the artist's lively
conversations with the world-renowned Russian filmmaker
Sergei Eisenstein, whom he first met while he was under
house arrest in Taxco during 1930-32. Eisenstein's
belief in the emotional and visual power of film and photography
and the creative use of montage was central in the formation
of Siqueiros' new approach to mural painting.
to emulate in mural painting the dramatic impact and scale
of film, Siqueiros began using filmic and photographic devices
in the making of his Los Angeles murals. In writing
about Street Meeting at the time of its making, Siqueiros
reveals how projecting the photographic image assisted in
the process of underdrawing for the mural: "After making
our first sketch we used the camera and motion picture to
aid us in elaboration of our first drawing, particularly
of the models." (Goldman article, 12) In a later
statement, Siqueiros remarked "The still camera and
the motion picture camera for the first time in history
offer us...the subtlest and amplest elements of space, of
volume in space, of movement in all its complexity."
(Micheli book, 9) Siqueiros continued his use of photographic
projection in his succeeding mural Tropical America.
In her research of Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932,
Shifra M. Goldman has shown that Siqueiros also used photography
as actual source material, not only as a means for projection.
She discovered that the artist based his painted portrayal
of J.P. Morgan directly on a photographic
portrait of the financier by Edward Steichen.
the other factors that make Portrait of Mexico Today,
1932, significant is that in this third and final Los
Angeles mural Siqueiros attempts his earliest formulations
of what he eventually called "polyangular perspective."
Like other modernists of his generation, Siqueiros was responsive
to modern physics, especially to the discoveries about the
fourth dimension, and thus sought new artistic conceptions
of space and time. Here, the example of Eisenstein and his
use of the novel technique of montage proved instrumental.
Portrait of Mexico Today, 1932, is a fascinating
study in how Siqueiros begins these new spatial explorations.
While the mural's forms are grandly simplified and made
monumentally arresting, the composition they comprise can
only be read and understood by viewing all of the painted
walls, which requires moving around the architectural space
and then synthesizing the distinct but interrelated sections
to arrive at meaning. Like montage Siqueiros calls
upon the viewer to synthesize disparate elements across
time and space. Additionally, his treatment of the top edges
and corners is an early effort at unifying mural painting
with architecture by incorporating it into the building
rather than merely applying it to a wall. In rendering
architectonic forms and varying their angles along the uppermost
reaches of the mural, Siqueiros aims to connect the ceiling
with the walls. Similarly, he presents the central
pyramid from multiple perspectives so that its base appears
to join the actual floor. These deliberate connections
between the painted walls and the ceiling and floor attempt
to activate the physical environment; they are compositional
inventions that Siqueiros fully develops in his next mural
as a way of mirroring the dynamism of the modern age.
of Mexico Today, 1932, remains the legacy of an intense
period of theoretical and practical experimentation for
Siqueiros. It sets the stage for the artist's completely
articulated use of "polyangular perspective" in
his tour de force Ejercicio plástico (Plastic Exercise)
painted in 1933, once again in political exile, at the Buenos
Aires home of newspaper editor Natalio Botana.
Angeles-based art historian and Siqueiros expert, Dr. Shifra
M. Goldman, and Jean Bruce Poole, Curator of El Pueblo de
Los Angeles Historical Monument, spent years trying to interest
the community in saving Tropical America. Their pioneering
efforts were eventually recognized by the J. Paul Getty