David siqueiros biography and paintings
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He would call this the "controlled accident" in painting. Behind a wall of armored, anonymous Spanish soldiers appears La Malinche, a woman of noble blood who became a slave when she was gifted to the conquistador Cortes to become his translator. Despite the biting criticism, he defended the work, claiming it demonstrated a "post-baroque" aesthetics before its time.
He also teamed up with Diego Rivera, a fellow muralist and hard-core leftist, and Javier Guerrero, to start El Machete, the weekly paper that became the official mouthpiece for the country's Communist Party. On his right, a group of women march forward triumphantly, carrying symbols of nourishment, life, freedom, poetry and love. Around this figure are symbolic representations of fire (vivid red abstract flames), wind (horizontal spirals that balance the vertical of fire), water (the seashells) and earth ("two giant bones of a tropical fruit").
Furthermore, he experimented with industrially produced tools at the time, using unconventional airbrushing. The stoic Cuautemoc lies supine as the flames begin to consume his legs.
While still with the Mexican Revolution Army, he co-founded a group called the Congress of Soldier Artists. On the left, a personification of the Country, dressed in red, throws her arms up, and is imitated by a young maimed girl beside her. Siqueiros also depicts the Old Chilean flag, the new flag, and the current one.
At the age of 18 Siqueiros joined the Mexican Revolution Army, eventually attaining the rank of captain.
He strongly backed the new Cuban government and its leader, Fidel Castro, and came out swinging against the U.S. and its war in Vietnam. His murals there told the story of America's forceful relationship with Latin America. Combined, the two murals allude to the invention of the atomic bomb, and the unjust pain and destruction made possible by military superiority and inhumanity.
Working in Los Angeles, his two major projects were both whitewashed over shortly after their completion. The use of industrial material, including airbrushes and commercial lacquers, would later be emblematic of Pop art, although those later artists used these materials to produce diametrically opposite content. Diagnosed with cancer in 1973, Siqueiros died the following year.
His commitment to education and his belief that public art could inform and inspire the masses to demand revolution has served as a model of activism for subsequent artists with political or social agendas.
The construction of the complex and its decoration was a monumental undertaking, a collaborative project that brought together international teams of architects, artists, and engineers in the construction of a space of public education. He would continue to make explicit and denunciatory murals throughout his career, earning him a rebellious reputation.