José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican symbolism artist who lived from 1883 to 1949. He painted mainly social realism scenes and is considered the greatest mural fresco artist of the twentieth century.
Orozco and his family moved to Mexico City when he was very young. The increased exposure to art got him interested in it from a very early age. Each day on the way to school he would pass by the workshop of the master engraver, José Guadalupe Posada which greatly influenced Orozco. Under the wishes of his father, Orozco switched his studies from painting to agriculture and architectural draughtsmanship, but after losing his left hand in an accident, he returned to his first love, art.
In 1905, Orozco re-enrolled at the Academy of San Carlos. One of his teachers was Gerardo Murillo, a radical artist, who encouraged his students to reject the trends of western European art and pursue their own national art identity. Orozco was inspired by Murillo and his work was centered solely around Mexican themes. His early work was that of a cartoonist and satiric artist.
After a brief stint in the United States, Orozco returned to Mexico in 1920 and was commissioned by the new Mexican government to create murals. Jose Vasconcelos, the Minister of Education at the time, was an advocate and supporter of many of Mexico’s emerging artists including Orozco and Diego Rivera. Orozco was a leader of the Mexican muralist movement that spread across Mexico in the 1920s. During the 1920s after the Revolution of the early 20th century, the Mexican government commissioned many murals to help foster and solidify the burgeoning national identity and personal national history. They were also intended to help reunify the country politically as well as socially. This started the most important phase of Orozco’s career, his work on fresco murals, that he would continue until his death. By the time of his death in 1949 at age 65, Orozco was an internationally acclaimed artist.
Mexico muralism helped breathe new life into this grand style of public art, uniting political commentaries with the modern art world. This style of painting greatly influenced American artists, especially the WPA artists of the 1930s who were traveling the country painting scenes of the Great Depression.
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