At the end of his intervention in the dome and the platform of the Auditorium of the University of Guadalajara, in 1939, with the murals “The creative and rebel man” and “The people and their false leaders”, respectively, José Clemente was asked Orozco what was left to do after executing this marvelous work.
With complete clarity and his ambition still intact, 17 years after the muralist movement began in Mexico, with a consolidated projection abroad and a large part of the masterpieces already executed, Orozco replied that it remained to seize all the walls.
This statement gives reason for the title of the show Seizing All Walls. Preliminary projects by José Clemente Orozco, which this Thursday opens to the public in four rooms of the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts and marks the end of the commemorations for the centenary of Muralism, as well as the start of the celebrations for the 140th anniversary of the birth of the artist who was born in Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, on November 23, 1883.
This exhibition brings together more than 180 preparatory sketches for 13 murals executed by Orozco over a quarter of a century in Mexico and the United States, from 1923, with his fundamental intervention on the walls of the National Preparatory School, today San Ildefonso, until 1947. , with the creation of the mural “National Allegory” at the Benemérita Escuela Nacional de Maestros, whose sketches represent the preamble to 90% of his mural production and were made with various techniques including pencil drawing, charcoal, gouache or tempera. .
The chief curator of the Cabañas Museum, Víctor Palacios Armendáriz, who led the tour prior to the opening of the exhibition, explained that these sketches make up one of the most important collections of the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (INBAL), but delivered in loan to the Cabañas Museum since its founding in 1983. This is the first time in 40 years that all these pieces are brought together for public enjoyment and it is its second venue after being presented last year in the enclosure that houses them.
A revalued tool
“The sketches are a kind of hybridization, between the tool, the historical document and the work of art,” declared Palacios Armendáriz. “For the muralists, the sketches had, more than anything else, a utilitarian character. But it is important to see them as a rather complex creative process. Many of them have stains, annotations, some element that does not make sense with the rest of the sketch, because the artists, Orozco in particular, saw the exercise as a kind of graphic note. Fortunately, as the history of art and the aesthetic valuation of practically everything left by great artists have progressed, we value them and consider them as works of art”.
And the exhibition in Fine Arts allows precisely that, to assess the quality of the sketch as the preliminary part of the mural, as a historical document, with as much relevance as it is delicacy, and a testimony of the gestating process in which the artist tests, discards and plays with the composition.
In addition, the importance of this exhibition being presented chronologically, the curator agrees, is that it reveals to us “a clear process of maturity in his career and, above all, a certainty about what he wanted to capture. For example, for the Hospicio Cabañas, it is clear that he does not need to make so many sketches or so many detailed notes, due to the experience he already had at 55 years of age”.
Orozco’s sketches show us an artist who is always eager to learn, who allows himself to be influenced by others, who incorporates geometry and, above all, who rehearses tirelessly about the representative possibilities of the human body. In particular, the sketches on hands and feet stand out, their torsion, the posture of the muscles and bones, the flexibility and the angle in which they should be reflected on the wall.
An example of the result of these anatomical tests is the Miguel Hidalgo that the artist depicted on the vault of the stairs of the Government Palace of Jalisco, because the so-called “father of the country” seems to come upon the viewer brandishing a flaming sword with his hand right.
of great delicacy
The sketches are such delicate materials that, lamented Palacios Armendáriz, for 35 of the 221 that were exhibited in the Cabañas Museum, it was impossible to transfer them for conservation reasons.
The curator indicated that after his stay at Bellas Artes, the collection will “rest” for at least six months.
(not so) nationalist art
Mexican Muralism was possible in large part due to the support of José Vasconcelos, the first Secretary of Public Education from 1921 to 1924 and, although at the beginning it was thought of as an effective didactic tool to standardize Mexican nationalism, Orozco, the chief curator agrees del Cabañas, “he could almost always turn it around, get rid of that stiff character that the directly political message could have had.”
Recommendations of the academic program
- Talk: “In search of a wall: José Clemente Orozco in New York, 1928-1934”
- Presents: Dafne Cruz Porchini
- Moderator: Xavier de la Riva
- Thursday June 8, 5 p.m.
- mural area
- Talk: “Murals in motion. José Clemente Orozco set designer and the Campobello sisters”
- Presents: Laura González Matute
- Moderator: Joshua Sanchez
- Thursday June 22, 6 p.m.
- Adamo Boari Room, Palace of Fine Arts
“Seize All Walls”
- Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts
- Rooms 1, 2, 3 and 4
- From May 4 to August 27
- With more than 180 sketches by José Clemente Orozco
