The Mexican Muralists and Their Indigenous Influences, and the American Artists They Influence

Catalog description

This art workshop will focus primarily on the three major muralists, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siquieros, and examine the influences that informed their work such as the indigenous cultures of the Aztecs and the Mayans, folk artists such Guadalupe Posada and his depiction of human skeletons in quotidian settings, art movements such as Surrealism and Dadaism, and radical political movements at home and abroad. We will also discus how their work directly impacted American artists they influenced and who later went on to become seminal artists themselves such as Jackson Pollack, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, and Georgia O'Keeffe. Important questions will be considered such as: how do economic imbalances and radical politics shape the way one creates art? How does race and racism determine the way we view art and the makers of art?