José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 – September 7, 1949) was a Mexican caricaturist and painter, who specialized in political murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others. Orozco was the most complex of the Mexican muralists, fond of the theme of human suffering, but less realistic and more fascinated by machines than Rivera. Mostly influenced by Symbolism, he was also a genre painter and lithographer. Between 1922 and 1948, Orozco painted murals in Mexico City; Orizaba; Claremont, California; New York City; Hanover, New Hampshire; Guadalajara, Jalisco; and Jiquilpan, Michoacán.

Life

José Clemente Orozco was born in 1883 in Zapotlán el Grande (now Ciudad Guzmán), Jalisco to Rosa de Flores Orozco. He was the oldest of his siblings. In 1890 Orozco became interested in art after moving to Mexico City. He married Margarita Valladares, and had three children. At the age of 21, Orozco lost his left hand while working with gunpowder to make fireworks.

thumb|[[Prometheus (Orozco)|Prometeo del Pomona College, 1930]]

The satirical illustrator José Guadalupe Posada, whose engravings about Mexican culture and politics challenged Mexicans to think differently about post-revolutionary Mexico, worked in full view of the public in shop windows located on the way Orozco went to school. In his autobiography, Orozco confesses, "I would stop [on my way to and from school] and spend a few enchanted minutes in watching [Posada]... This was the push that first set my imagination in motion and impelled me to cover paper with my earliest little figures; this was my awakening to the existence of the art of painting." He goes on to say that watching Posada's engraving decorated gave him his introduction to the use of color. After attending school for Agriculture and Architecture, Orozco studied art at the Academy of San Carlos in 1906–1914. Orozco participated at the 1911 student's strike along with fellow student and future muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He worked as an illustrator for Mexico City newspapers, and directly as an illustrator for one of the Constitutionalist armies overseen by "First Chief" Venustiano Carranza. One of the greatest influences on Orozco in his adult years was Dr. Atl's view on Symbolism. In 1914, Orozco followed Dr. Atl to Orizaba when the competing armies were about to enter the city. When the revolutionary factions split in 1914 after Victoriano Huerta was ousted, Orozco supported Carranza and General Álvaro Obregón against Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata. The violence he witnessed profoundly affected his life and art. "The world was torn apart around us", he wrote in his autobiography. "Troop convoys passed on their way to slaughter. Trains were blown up."

In 1916, Orozco, disappointed by the review he received in Mexico about his art, went to the United States. Four years later Orozco came back to Mexico City and began working as a cartoonist. In July 1923, Orozco begun to work on his first mural project aided by Vasconcelos, he participated in the revolutionary war and his paintings reflected his view on the dark essence of the war.

With Diego Rivera, he was a leader of the artist movement known as Mexican Muralism. An important distinction he had from Rivera was his darker view of the Mexican Revolution. While Rivera was a bold, optimistic figure, touting the glory of the revolution, Orozco was less comfortable with the bloody toll the social movement was taking. Orozco is known as one of the "Big Three" muralists along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. All three artists, as well as the painter Rufino Tamayo, experimented with fresco on large walls, and elevated the art of the mural.

thumb|Mural [[Omniscience|Omnisciencia, 1925]]

Between 1922 and 1924, Orozco painted the murals Maternity, Man in Battle Against Nature, Christ Destroys His Cross, Destruction of the Old Order, The Aristocrats, The Trench and The Trinity at the National Preparatory School. Some of the murals were destroyed by Orozco himself, and later repainted. Others were vandalized by conservative students and practically destroyed. Thus, Orozco had to repaint many of them when he came back to the School in 1926. In 1925, he painted the mural Omniscience at Mexico City's House of Tiles. The following year, he painted a mural at the Industrial School in Orizaba, Veracruz.

thumb|Incendiary Hidalgo, a mural of [[Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla inside Palace of Government of Jalisco, Guadalajara|alt=]]

Between 1927 and 1934, Orozco lived in the United States. Even after the stock market crash in 1929, his works were still in demand. From March to June 1930, at the invitation of the Pomona College Art Department, he painted what he noted was the "first fresco painted outside the country by a painter of the Contemporary Mexican School". The fresco, Prometheus (Prometeo del Pomona College), on the wall of Pomona's Frary Dining Hall, was direct and personal at a time when murals were expected to be decorous and decorative and have been called the first "modern" fresco in the United States.

Later that year, he painted murals at the New School for Social Research, New York City, now known as The New School. One of his most famous murals is The Epic of American Civilization at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire. It was painted between 1932 and 1934 and covers almost across 24 panels. Its parts include: Migrations, Human Sacrifices, The Appearance of Quetzalcoatl, Corn Culture, Anglo-America, Hispano-America, Science and Modern Migration of the Spirit (another version of Christ Destroys His Cross). His work was also part of the Art competitions at the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.

After returning to Mexico, in 1934 Orozco painted a mural, The Catharsis, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

Remaining in Mexico, Orozco painted in Guadalajara, Jalisco, the mural The People and Their False Leaders in the Government Palace. The frescos for the Hospicio Cabañas, which are considered his masterpiece. In 1940 he painted at the Gabino Ortiz Library in Jiquilpan, Michoacán. Between 1942 and 1944 Orozco painted for the Hospital de Jesús in Mexico City. Orozco's 1948 Juárez Reborn huge portrait-mural was one of his last works.

In 1947, he illustrated the book The Pearl, by John Steinbeck.

While still residing in Mexico City, Orozco died in his sleep on September 7, 1949, aged 65. The cause of his death was heart failure.

Dartmouth mural

Orozco painted his fresco The Epic of American Civilization in the lower level of Dartmouth College's Baker Memorial Library. Jose Orozco's "Epic of American Civilization" is under the supervision of the Hood Art Museum.

File:Orozco - Dartmouth c.JPG|The Epic of American Civilization (1932–1934)

File:Orozco - Dartmouth a.JPG|Departure of Quetzalcoatl

File:Orozco - Dartmouth b.JPG|Gods of the Modern World

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Escuela Nacional Preparatoria

History and overview

thumb|Murals by Orozco at [[San Ildefonso College. The central panel is "The Trench".]]

José Clemente Orozco's mural series in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria at San Ildefonso College spans three floors of the building and includes multiple other murals in the stairway, all of which depict his critical view of the Revolution. The Escuela Nacional Preparatoria commissioned him in February 1923; however, his earlier panels created serious political conflict, causing him to cease his work, like Siqueiros'. He later returned to finish the work he began under a new wave of social change in 1926. Among the murals that Orozco destroyed are The Elements, Man Struggling Against Nature, Man Falling, and Christ Destroying His Cross.

thumb|The Trench, San Ildefonso College

The Trench is described as a "confirmation of what an extraordinary and powerful painter Orozco would turn out to be" and is compared to the mural The Farewell, "where the initial impression is of a bloody action scene of great melodrama." which contributes to the mural's balance but not in a symmetrical way. This is an allusion to the crucifix, with the central soldier playing the role of the martyr, which is further exemplified by his lack weapons.

thumb|The Trinity, San Ildefonso College

The Trinity is a negative image of the revolution in which a revolutionary leader is the central figure in the mural, "blinded by the red Jacobian hat of the revolution" and threatening the very people he is supposed to be fighting for. In this mural, the viewer sees a depiction of the rich, whose faces and bodies are obviously distorted, which is meant "to represent their decadence and abuses of power" and the working class. It is meant to portray the situation of the working class as oppressed by the rich and in a state of war with one another. This point is further exemplified by the view of the rich who can look down on the working class and continue to live a life of decadence without consequences. This displays the workers as completely blind to their situation by acting as gladiators for the entertainment of the rich. Tools held by the working class individuals in this murals are being used as weapons, which shows "the workers are turning the objects of their livelihood against themselves, have not acquired real weapons and are caught up in confusion about what people and things are really for, treating comrades like enemies."

Exhibitions

"¡Orozco!" by The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Institute of Fine Arts, Mexico at The Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1980.
"José Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927–1934" at the Hood Museum of Art, Hanover NH, 2002.
"Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945" at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2020.

Selected artworks

thumb|right|200px|A Mural painting from Orozco in Hospicio Cabañas, Guadalajara, Mexico

200px|thumb|Tomb of José Clemente Orozco

Praying Hands, 1900–24
Man Struggling Against Nature, 1923–24
Man Falling, 1923–24
Christ Destroying His Cross, 1923–24
Law and Justice, 1923–24
Jehovah Between the Rich and the Poor, 1923–24
At San Ildefonso College
Maternity, 1923–24
The Banquet of the Rich, 1923–24
The Strike, 1923–24
The Elements, 1923–24
Liberty, 1923–24
Garbage, 1923–24
The Rich, 1923–24
Women, 1924–26
The Grave Digger, 1924–26
The Blessing, 1924–26
The Workers, 1924–26
The Farewell, 1924–26
The Family, 1924–26
The Revolutionaries, 1924–26
Aboriginal Races, 1924–26
Franciscans Helping the Sick, 1924–26
Cortés and Malinche, 1924–26
The Drinking Men, 1924–26
Engineers, 1924–26
The Trench, 1926
The Destruction of the Old Order, 1926
The Subway, 1928
Échate la otra, 1930, Cleveland Museum of Art
Wounded Soldier, 1930, Cleveland Museum of Art
At Dartmouth College Library
American Civilization: Modern Human Sacrifice, 1932
American Civilization: Ancient Human Sacrifice, 1932
American Civilization: The Gods of The Modern World, 1932

References

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