Word: riverae
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...Paris Siqueiros became convinced that French-style art was bad, and that Mexicans like Diego Rivera were blind to follow it. Shouting over the wine in Montmartre cafés, Siqueiros gradually formulated a theory to support his furious conviction. He found backers for a short-lived magazine, Vida Americana, in which he fired the opening gun of a fight to make art as useful, well-engineered and open to the public as an up-to-date subway system. "Now," wrote Siqueiros disgustedly, looking at the art around him, "we draw silhouettes with pretty colors...
Back in Mexico, in 1922, Siqueiros followed through with a manifesto which Orozco and Diego Rivera both signed, and which started the eruption of modern Mexican art. Its thesis: art is for social welfare, not private pleasure, and should therefore be large-scale and easy to understand. The three men formed the nucleus of a union-the Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors-and negotiated contracts with an extraordinarily sympathetic and discerning government to paint murals at so much per square meter...
Seeds for the Future. Gustavo now spends his time editing the History, handling the many orders ($1,400 a month) for pictures from the archives. Sometimes Muralist Diego Rivera comes to study revolutionary faces. Pictures that go into the files today, says Gustavo, show "fewer hangings and battles and more construction projects and dedications. . . . We are coming to years when the fruits of the Mexican Revolution are being gathered, maybe not exactly the same fruits the revolutionists thought they were planting, but fruits that Mexicans should see and remember, for they will furnish the seeds of future harvests...
...Came Poetry. He and the hotel architect had agreed that his theme should be "Sunday in the Alameda" (the city's finest park, opposite the Prado). But Rivera, like his fellow triumvirs of Mexican art, Siqueiros and Orozco, was no man to waste a big hunk of wall on a merely pastoral theme. He had crammed his picture of the Alameda with the villains and heroes, the blood and dreams, of Mexican history. Said he: "Every one of the 148 figures in this mural I have known personally. I've shaken hands with most of them...
Unappetizing Wall. Prado diners might find parts of Rivera's mural rough on the digestion. Among the dreams of the past, floating above the park benches on the left, was a minutely gory torture scene from Mexico's Inquisition, and the dreams of the future had room for what appeared to be acid caricatures of contemporary governmental officials. (Rivera explained that any resemblances were coincidental: "It's only because living people frequently run to type.") But few could fail to be charmed by the portrait of the artist as a messy little fat boy, standing smack...