art similar to the sufferer and the witness

Orozco painted a monumental Prometheus reaching up to the sky to take fire, a symbol of wisdom and enlightenment, from the ceiling panel that depicts stylized flames, representing God, the source of wisdom. This mural is expressionistic, contrasting with the placid depiction of Maternity. Having witnessed it directly (unlike Rivera, who was in Paris) and been thoroughly scarred by the ferocity of his countrymen during the Revolution, Orozco seeks to promote peace by denouncing the violence of revolution. With The Trench, Orozco illustrates his refusal to idealize the Revolution as Rivera and Siqueiros did. By 1929, the morale of the populace regarding the Revolution had deteriorated considerably compared to the early optimism of 1923. Due to Orozco's new interest in modern art, with its representations of space and time as mutable and relative, the three men could be interpreted as a single soldier depicted in different moments in time. The sharp diagonal of the composition and the vivid red of the background convey the scene's drama. The three fallen, faceless men form a cross. The Trench depicts soldiers fighting in the Mexican Revolution. The softly delineated flesh of the figures in the earlier work and the Renaissance elegance of the overall rendering in Maternity has given way to a frank, modernist style in which forms are less modeled, line is expressive, and the palette reflective of the dark, emotional content of the mural. The Trench is one of the works that he produced during his second stay at the ENP and is dramatically different from his earlier works at that site such as Maternity. He destroyed some of his early work there but returned in 1926 to add a new set of frescoes to the ground floor.

Orozco was forced to stop working at the ENP in 1924. In fact, a group of Catholic women misinterpreted the secular meaning of Maternity, thought it sacrilegious, and attacked it.įresco - National Preparatory School (ENP), Mexico City, Mexico This particular mural is of immense value because it is the only surviving one of Orozco's earliest frescoes, as most were destroyed by conservative students at the ENP while others were demolished by Orozco himself. Here we see Orozco subtly critique the very institution that commissioned him for the work. In this work, the beauty standard is European rather than indigenous.

Following the Mexican Revolution, the new government encouraged the production of public art to promote a nationalist program of unity, of the concept of an integrated populace or 'Mexicanos.' However, Orozco's use of overtly European figures seems to challenge the assertion by an increasingly authoritarian government that equality had been achieved. The Renaissance influence is striking not only in the representation of the figures themselves but also in the pyramidal composition and the lapis lazuli-colored garment the mother wears, a color traditionally linked to the figure of the Virgin Mary. The women are noticeably European: blond and with classical features. A sensual, reclining nude female turns her back to the viewer as she eats grapes, the fruit associated with Dionysus and celebration. Allegorical Boticelli-esque females in deep folds of windblown drapery surround the mother and child. Maternity depicts a mother and child it resembles Renaissance depictions of Mary and the infant Jesus, with the exception of the conspicuous nudity of the mother. This mural is one of Orozco's earliest frescoes, painted for the ground floor of the National Preparatory School (ENP) in Mexico City. The Mexican Muralist movement as a whole asserted the importance of large-scale public art and Orozco's murals, in particular, made space for bold, open social and political critique. Orozco's skill as a cartoonist and print maker is detectable not only in his style but also in his ability to communicate a complex message - generally, timely political subjects - simply and on a massive scale. Orozco's style is a mixture of conventional, Renaissance-period compositions and modeling, emotionally expressive, modernist abstraction, typically dark, ominous palettes, and forms and iconography deriving from the country's indigenous, pre-colonial, pre-European art. What was perceived as standoffishness was, by all accounts, the profound despair of a person who felt deeply for others. One possible explanation for that is that, unlike his colleagues, David Siqueiros and Diego Rivera, Orozco openly criticized both the Mexican Revolution and the post-Revolution government. Of 'Los tres grandes' (The Three Greats) of the Mexican Muralists, José Clemente Orozco, notoriously introverted and pessimistic, is in many ways the least revered.

Art similar to the sufferer and the witness