Mexican Muralism and Frida Kahlo

The Mexican Revolution (1910 to 1920) overturned Mexico's old order. Afterward, the government wanted art that every citizen could see, including people who could not read. From 1921 the education minister, José Vasconcelos, gave artists the walls of public buildings: schools, ministries and the National Palace. Mexican muralism was born. It looked back to the great art of ancient Mexico and to the frescoes of the Italian Renaissance, painted in true fresco on wet plaster.

Three painters, called los tres grandes, "the three great ones," led the movement. Diego Rivera (1886 to 1957) painted crowded, colorful murals of Mexican history, from the ancient Aztec world to modern workers, most famously on the stairway and walls of the National Palace in Mexico City (from 1929 to 1935). He also painted murals in the United States, in San Francisco, Detroit and New York. José Clemente Orozco (1883 to 1949) painted darker, more tragic murals about suffering and the human condition. David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896 to 1974) experimented with industrial paints, spray guns and dramatic, swooping viewpoints. All their murals are still in copyright, so they are described here, not shown.

Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (1907 to 1954) was badly injured at 18, in 1925, when a bus she was riding collided with a streetcar; she began to paint while recovering in bed, with a mirror above her. Of her roughly 140 paintings, about a third (some 55) are self-portraits. She married Diego Rivera in 1929. Her style drew on Mexican folk art and on small devotional paintings on tin called retablos: bright colors, flat backgrounds, clear outlines and symbolic objects. She often wore the long embroidered dresses of the Tehuana women of southern Mexico, to celebrate Mexican tradition.

Looking closely (in words): Frieda and Diego Rivera

Kahlo's double portrait Frieda and Diego Rivera (1931, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) is in copyright and is described here. Describe. The couple stand hand in hand against a plain background: Rivera large and heavy in a dark suit, holding a palette and brushes; Kahlo small, in a long green dress and red shawl, her feet tiny beneath her skirt. A dove above them carries a ribbon with an inscription. Analyze. The difference in size, the flat colors and the ribbon recall Mexican folk portraits. Interpret. It is a wedding portrait in folk style, painted in San Francisco while Rivera worked on murals there; he holds the tools of the artist, and she, at this point, does not.