Mural Painting in Mexico

Before Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros were lauded as heroes of the twentieth-century muralismo movement, artists had been painting on walls throughout Mexico for centuries for both public and private audiences. We will consider how murals were sites for elite consumption and religious contemplation, political tools, agents for social change, and nexuses of collective identity. We will examine Mexican wall painting through time from Pre-Columbian dwellings and ceremonial spaces, to the painted interiors of Spanish colonial residences and churches, to public displays uniting post-Revolutionary Mexico, ending with the Chicano mural movement and vibrant community spaces of contemporary Mexico and the U.S.