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media type="custom" key="24004752" **These works of art were inspired by the Mexican Revolution.** **Your observations** **History of Mexican Revolution**
 * 1) //Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park// by Diego Rivera
 * 2) //Zapata// by José Clemente Orozco
 * 3) //La Calavera Catrina// by José Guadalupe Posada
 * 4) //Echo of a Scream// by David Alfaro Siquieros
 * 5) //La Adelita, Pancho Villa and Frida// by Frida Kahlo
 * Are there any common themes among these images?
 * What emotions do they evoke?
 * What messages do you think the artists were trying to convey?
 * Mexico was originally a colony of Spain. The Spanish used the natives as slaves and made them perform manual labor. During this time, divisions between social classes grew, and many natives and Mexican-born Spaniards began to get angry with Spain.
 * One priest, Father Hidalgo, believed in racial equality, fair redistribution of land, and bringing an end to the 300 years of Spanish rule. In 1810, Hidalgo and a group of peasants declared war and led a revolt against the Spanish **(El Grito de Dolores - 15/16 de septiembre 1810)**. Although they were not successful, this was considered the start of the War of Independence, which eventually led to the establishment of Mexico as its own country.
 * A century later, in 1910, the people of Mexico, suffering under the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz, rose up again in rebellion. Porfirio greatly expanded Mexico’s industry and economy, but the gap between rich and poor continued to grow as he neglected to improve the lives of the great number of peasants who lived in dire poverty. This led to the Mexican Revolution.

=Fernando Botero (Colombia)=

[|Diego Rivera murals] =Diego Rivera (Mexico)=

= = =**Salvador Dali (Espana) - The Persistance of Memory** = **Year:** 1931 **Dimensions:** 24x33 cm **Material:** Oil on canvas **Movement:** Surrealism **Current location:** Museum of Modern Art, New York City **About the painting:** This is the best known painting by Salvador Dalí. After entertaining guests in the evening, Dalí sat at the table looking upon the soft, half melted Camembert cheese. Suddenly the idea of melting watches came to him and he immediately got to work. During this time i Dalí's life he was influenced by Freud, and dream analysis was an active ingredient in Dalí's paintings. He was also impressed by Einstein's conclusion that time is relative and not rigid.

Diego Rivera (Mexico)
El Museo Mural Diego Rivera houses Diego Rivera's famous mural //Dream of a Sunday Afternoon in Alameda Park,// which was painted on a wall of the Hotel Prado in 1947. The hotel was demolished after the 1985 earthquake, but the mural, perhaps the best known of Rivera's works, was saved and transferred to its new location in 1986. The huge picture, 15m long and 4m high (49*13 ft.), chronicles the history of the park from the time of Cortez onward. Portrayed in the mural are numerous historical figures. More or less from left to right, but not in chronological order, they include: Cortez; a heretic suffering under the Spanish Inquisition; Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a brilliant, progressive woman who became a nun to continue her scholarly pursuits; Benito Juárez, seen putting forth the laws of Mexico's great Reforma; the conservative Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna, handing the keys to Mexico to the invading American Gen. Winfield Scott; Emperor Maximilian and Empress Carlota; José Martí, the Cuban revolutionary; Death, with the plumed serpent (Quetzalcóatl) entwined about his neck; Gen. Porfirio Díaz, great with age and medals, asleep; a police officer keeping La Alameda free of "riffraff" by ordering a poor family out of the elitists' park; and Francisco Madero, the martyred democratic president who caused the downfall of Díaz, and whose betrayal and alleged murder by Gen. Victoriano Huerta (pictured on the right) resulted in years of civil turmoil.

[|Diego Rivera - A Visual Biography]
[|Fotos comentadas de Diego Rivera] media type="custom" key="24197214"Video: Biografia de Diego Rivera

Orozco (Mexico)
This dramatic canvas was painted during José Clemente Orozco’s self-imposed exile in the United States, where he moved in 1927, in part to escape political unrest, but also because he felt that it was increasingly difficult to get commissions in his native land. A leader of the Mexican mural movement of the 1920s and 1930s, Orozco claimed to have painted //Zapata// to finance his trip back to New York after completing a mural commission in California. For liberal Mexicans, Emiliano Zapata became a symbol of the Mexican Revolution (1910–20) after his assassination in 1919. The charismatic Zapata crusaded to return the enormous holdings of wealthy landowners to Mexico’s peasant population. Here his specterlike figure appears in the open door of a peasant hut. Despite the drama before him, the revolutionary hero seems solemn and unmoved. The painting is filled with menacing details—the bullets, the dagger, and especially the sword aimed at Zapata’s eye—and the somber palette of dark reds, browns, and blacks further underscores the danger of the revolutionary conflict.

Posada (Mexico)
La Catrina as we know her originated with [|Jose Guadalupe Posada], considered the father of Mexican printmaking. Born in 1852, he apprenticed to a local printmaker and publisher when he was just 14. Moving to Mexico City in 1888, he soon became the chief artist for [|Antonio Vanegas Arroyo], publisher of illustrated broadsides, street gazettes, chapbooks and other popular forms of literature, including songbooks for the popular //corridos//. He became famous for //calaveras// (skulls or skeletons) images that he wielded as political and social satire, poking fun at every imaginable human folly. His influence on Diego Rivera, [|Jose Clemente Orozco] and other great artists of their generation was incalculable. {La Catrina's} bappearance has everything to do with the Mexican Revolution. Posada's working life paralleled the reign of dictator Porfirio Díaz, whose accomplishments in modernizing and bringing financial stability to Mexico pale against his government's repression, corruption, extravagance and obsession with all things European. Concentration of fantastic wealth in the hands of the privileged few brewed discontent in the hearts of the suffering many, leading to the 1910 rebellion that toppled Diaz in 1911 and became the Mexican Revolution. Posada's illustrations brought the stories of the day to the illiterate majority of impoverished Mexicans, both expressing and spreading the prevailing disdain for Porfirio's regime. The image now called "La Calavera Catrina" was published as a broadside in 1910, just as the revolution was picking up steam. Posada's //calaveras// — La Catrina above all, caricaturizing a high-society lady as a skeleton wearing only a fancy French-style hat — became a sort of satirical obituary for the privileged class. But his Catrina cast a wider net: His original name for her, "La Calavera Garbancera," used a term that in his day referred to native Mexicans who scorned their culture and tried to pass as European.

**Siqueiros (Mexico) **
David Alfaro Siqueiros **,** (born December 29, 1896, [|Chihuahua], [|Mexico]—died January 6, 1974, Cuernavaca), Mexican painter and muralist whose [|art] reflected his Marxist political ideology. He was one of the three founders of the modern school of [|Mexican][|mural] [|painting] (along with [|Diego Rivera] and [|José Clemente Orozco]). His most famous painting was [|Echo of a Scream]. This piece was inspired by his experiences during active combat and his observations of suffering. By illustrating a baby, this piece emphasizes the internal suffering of the innocent victims of the Revolution.