David Siqueiros was a Mexican painter and muralist, whose art reflected his Marxist political ideology. David's works are distinguished for their use of dynamic perspective, monumental forms, dramatic use of shadow and a limited color palette. In addition to painting, Siqueiros was an avid political activist with a tumultuous personal history.
Background
David Siqueiros was born on December 29, 1896 in Camargo, Chihuahua, Mexico. He was the son of Cipriano Alfaro and Teresa Siqueiros. David's mother died, when he was four and his father sent him and his siblings to live with their paternal grandparents.
Education
Siqueiros studied at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, before leaving in 1913 to fight in the army of Venustiano Carranza during the Mexican Revolution. Later, he continued his art studies in Europe.
In 1911, at the age of fifteen, Siqueiros was involved in a student strike at the Academy of San Carlos, that protested the school's teaching methodology and urged the impeachment of the school's director. Their protests eventually led to the establishment of an "open-air academy" in Santa Anita.
As one of the artists, who collaborated in painting the murals for the staircase at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City in 1922, Siqueiros became one of the founders of the mural movement in Mexico. He served as a secretary general of the Painter's Syndicate and became one of the editors of its publication "El machete".
In 1923, David painted his famous mural "Burial of a Worker" in the stairwell of the Colegio Chico. The fresco features a group of pre-Conquest style workers in a funeral procession, who are carrying a giant coffin, decorated with a hammer and sickle. The mural was never finished.
Together with Amado de la Cueva, he organized the Alliance of Painters in Guadalajara in 1925, and there he worked with De la Cueva and Carlos Orozco on decorations for the University of Guadalajara.
Siqueiros served as a representative of various workers' organizations to Russia in 1928 and as a delegate to workers' meetings in South America in 1929. In 1931, he was exiled to Taxco for political reasons.
During the period from 1932 to 1933, Siqueiros was appointed a professor at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he developed new technical processes for outdoor murals, including the use of airbrushes to apply paint. Beginning in 1934, he devoted himself more and more to easel painting and carried out various experiments with Duco paint.
In 1936, David served as a delegate from the Congress of Mexican Artists to the Congress of Revolutionary Artists in New York, and there he established a school, in which he set forth his revolutionary artistic ideas. The following year, he joined the Spanish Republican Army.
From 1939 to 1944, Siqueiros resided in Cuba and Chile.
The painter participated in the first ever Mexican contingent at the XXV Venice Biennale exhibition with Orozco, Rivera and Tamayo in 1950. In 1957, he began to work on 4,500-square-foot government commission for Chapultepec Castle in Mexico City.
Since 1960 to 1964, Siqueiros was imprisoned by the Mexican government for the crime of "social dissolution". In 1969, he spoke at the First National Painting Contest, in which some 7,000 artists from all parts of Mexico participated.
During the following years, Siqueiros continued to create sculptures and painting, incorporating different materials and methods.
The People for the University. The University for the People.
Prometheus Bound
The Elements
Unfinished Mural
The Torment of Cuauhtemoc
Ceiling on the area of Vida y Obra de General Ignacio Allende
Portrait of Jose Clemente Orozco
The Good Neighbor
Self-Portrait
Hannibal
View of a mural depicting Democracy breaking her chains
The Torment of Cuauhtemoc (sketch)
The Resurrection of Cuauhtemoc
Rectory
Excommunication and Execution of Father Hidalgo
Chichen Itza Burning
Portrait of Present Day Mexico
Allegory of Racial Equality
The Dance of the Rain
The Lord of Poison
Portrait of the Bourgeoisie
Amado de la Cueva
Portrait of Dramatist Margarita Urueta
The March of Humanity
The Revolution (mural)
Head of a Woman
Ethnography
The March of Humanity
The Revolutionary
Portrait of Angelica
The March of Humanity
Women of Chilpancingo
King Cuauhtemoc
Carlos Orozco Romero
Atomic aircraft
Our Present Image
Portrait of the Bourgeoisie
Enough
Death to the Invader
The March of Humanity (detail)
Cain in the United States
New University Emblem
Peace
Mural of Orozco
Hart Crane
Solitary Confinement
Patricians and Patrice
Proletarian Mother
Self-Portrait
Christ
From the Dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz to the Revolution – The People in Arms
The Child Mother
Self-Portrait
For the Complete Safety of all Mexicans on Work
Burial of a worker
Politics
David was a Marxist-Leninist in support of the Soviet Union and a member of the Mexican Communist Party, who participated in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Leon Trotsky in May 1940.
Views
Quotations:
"Art is a weapon that penetrates the eyes, the ears, the deepest and subtlest human feelings."
"The artist must paint as he would speak. I don’t want people to speculate what I mean, I want them to understand."
Connections
In 1929, David married Blanca Luz Brum, a journalist. Some time later, in 1935, the couple divorced. Angelica Buster was the painter's second wife. The couple gave birth to one child — Adriana Alfaro Arenal.