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'José Clemente Orozco' (born November 23, 1883, in Zapotlán el Grande (now Ciudad Guzmán), Jalisco; died September 7, 1949, in Mexico City) was a Mexican social realist painter who specialized in bold murals. Orozco was fond of the theme of the human versus the mechanical. He was also a genre painter and lithographer.

Contents

Life and Work

Mexican Muralism Overview

Art Works

Exhibitions

References

External links

Life and Work

Jose Orozco was born to Rosa de Flores Orozco, he married Margarita Valladares and had three children.
As a young boy, Orozco’s family moved from Cuidad Guzman to Guadalajara and then to Mexico City where he attended primary school. At this time, Jose Guadalupe Posada, a satirical illustrator whose engravings about Mexican culture and politics challenged Mexicans to think differently about what was going on in post-revolution Mexico worked in full view of the public in shop windows on the way to and from school for Orozco. In his autobiography, Orozco confesses “I would stop [on my way to and from school] and spend a few enchanted minutes in watching [Posado]… This was the push that first set my imagination in motion and impelled me to cover paper with my earliest little figures; this was my awakening to the existence of the art of painting.” (Orozco, 1962) He goes to say that watching Posado’s engraving decorated gave him his introduction to the use of color. After attending school for Agriculture and Architecture, Orozco studied art in earnest at the San Carlos Academy.
With Diego Rivera, he was a leader of the Mexican Renaissance. An important distinction he had from Rivera was his critical view of the Mexican Revolution. While Diego was a bold, optimistic figure, touting the glory of the revolution, Orozco was less comfortable with the bloody toll the social movement was taking. Orozco is known as one of the "Big Three" muralists along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. All three artists, as well as the painter Rufino Tamayo, originated in Mexico and experimented with frescoes and murals on large walls. One of his most famous murals is ''The Epic of American Civilization'' at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA. It was painted between 1932 and 1934 and covers almost 300 m² (3200 square feet) in 24 panels. Another of his murals is to be found at the New School for Social Research, now known as the New School University.

Mexican Muralism Overview

The Mexican Revolution took place from approximately 1910 -1920. Despite its name, the Mexican Revolution was actually a civil war, consisting of warring factions in Mexico fighting each other for power. Among the leaders of different sides are infamous Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. Once the revolution was ended, there was great social unrest as Mexicans tried to figure out the best way to put their nation back together. Muralism came out of a desire to depict the revolution in order to understand what happened and what it meant for Mexico. Jose Vasconcelos, Mexican Secretary of Education commissioned Orozco, Rivero, and Siquieros to create murals in public places in or order to create in the post revolution a sense of Mexican identity. It was this investment and support and that really gave the muralist movement birth.

Art Works

★ "The Revolutionary Trinity Trinity" (1923-24) at the National Preparatory School in Mexico

★ "Los Dos Agentes" (1924) in Mexico

★ "The Trench" (1924) at the National Preparatory School in Mexico

★ ''Prometheus'' (1930, at Pomona College, California)

★ ''Zapata'' (1930)

★ "Pancho Villa" (1931) in Mexico

★ "Hidalgo and National Independence" (1937) on the pricipal staircase of the Palace of Government in Guadalajara

★ "Still-born Education" (1938) at Dartmouth College

★ ''The Man of Fire'' (1939)

★ "Juarez, the Church and the Imperialists" (1948) at Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City

★ "Omniscience"(1925) at the Casa de Azulejos in Mexico City

★ "Allegory of the Apocolypse in Modern Times" at the Hospital de Jesús Nazareno in Mexico City

★ "Catharsis" at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City

★ "Justice" in the Supreme Court Building in Mexico City

★ ''Christ Destroying His Cross'' (1943)

Exhibitions

"¡Orozco!" by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico at The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1980

References

Anreus, Alejandro. Orozco in Gringoland: the Years in New York. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque. 2001.

Elliott, David, ed. !Orozco! Council of Museum of Modern Art. Oxford. 1980.
Grove Dictionary of art. 565-568.

Hurlburt, Laurance P. The Mexican Muralists in the United States. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque. 13-88. 1989.

Orozco, Jose Clemente. An Artist in New York: Letters to Jean Charlot and Unpublished Writings. Austin. 1974.

Orozco, Jose Clemente. An Autobiography. University of Texas Press. Austin. 1962.

Reed, Alma. Orozco. Oxford University Press. New York. 1956.

External links

★ MexConnect.com

★ ''The Epic of American Civilization'' at Dartmouth.edu

★ ''Prometheus'', fresco mural; 20' x 28' 6", at ArtsCenecal.com

★ ''Zapata'', Oil on canvas; 178.4 x 122.6 cm, at Abstract-Art.com

★ ''Christ Destroying his Cross'', Oil on canvas; 36 5/8 x 511/8 in., at Humanities-interactive.org

★ Man of Fire and other murals at Hospicio Cabañas