Beginning in the 1920's, in post-revolutionary Mexico, something radical was going on. Buildings were being allocated to artists to use for the purpose of creating public art that was monumental in scale and served to communicate political and social messages to the Mexican people. Following the Porfiriato Era, where the dictator Porfirio Diaz ruled for almost 30 years, Mexico was in search of its historic roots and its true cultural identity. After all, the Mexico of the Diaz regime looked and felt more like Europe, namely France. In wanting to develop a new national identity, Mexico looked to its pre-Hispanic roots and great cultures that inhabited Mesoamerica. Influenced by engraver Jose Guadalupe Posada and artist Dr. Atl (Gerardo Murillo), Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros each painted in their own techniques and delivered their unique messages. On this art history tour, we will learn of the influences, facilitators, artists of this unique historical art movement.

• Learn about the antecedents of Mexican Muralism, namely the Porfiriato Era
• Understand who the primary influencers were of this singular art movement, such as Dr. Atl, Jose Guadalupe Posada and Jose Vasconcelos.
• Study early murals and late murals to see how each artist evolved over time
• Compare the major muralists, Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros to see how each was different in both technique and message
• Places visited include: Palace of Fine Arts, Colegio San Idelfonso, Ministry of Education, National Palace and more

• ITINERARY SUBJECT TO MODIFICATIONS
• Day One: Arrive in Mexico City Orientation Tour to understand the historical context of Mexican Muralism. We will view monuments, buildings and art of the “Porfiriato” Era, such as the Monument to the Independence, in the Alameda Park area we see the famed Palace of Fine Arts. In the Zocalo, we can see the great clash of cultures that occurred in the 16th Century when the Spaniards arrived at the great Aztec capital city of Tenochtitlan. Our welcome dinner is at the local favorite, La Fonda del Refugio in the Zona Rosa, (D)
• Day Two: MUNAL, Museo Nacional de Arte and National Palace. We begin our day at the famed House of Tiles to enjoy breakfast, before our art history lesson. To further enhance our understanding of what was taking place in Mexico, we will visit Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL). This museum has state of the art displays of Mexican art from the colonial period through the 1940s. The museum is located within one of the great Porfirian “palaces” the former Palace of Communications. The galleries have excellent examples of the early influences and antecedents to the formal muralism movement, such as, landscape painting by José María Velasco, graphic prints by José Guadalupe Posada, open air school paintings by Dr. Atl, and pre-Revolutionary works by Saturnino Herran. We lunch at another favorite Mexico City restaurant, El Cardenal. In the afternoon we visit Rivera’s mature style in a mural series that depicts the History of Mexico.(B,L)
• Day Three: Antiguo Colegio San Idelfonso, Secretary of Education Murals: The First Murals: Today we see the first mural attempts, sponsored by Jose Vasconcelos, the Minister of Education, where he provided the walls of the Colegio San Idelfonso, “Prepa” or high school, as a laboratory for the artists. Here, we see the first attempts to make monumental public art by the Mexican artists. As we progress on our study tour, we will see how each artist developed and a true art movement is evidenced, as art became more political and less neutral in theme and style. The dramatic changes in style evident in the Orozco and Siqueiros’ murals, are the direct result of the impact of the Communist party on the muralists in 1923-4 when they published their manifesto. From here, we visit the Ministry of Public Education (SEP), where we see Rivera’s murals that provide excellent evidence of how he evolved, between 1923 and 1928. These murals lay out his most important themes: the peasant revolution, worker’s struggle, Mexican history and popular folk rituals. They also reveal the evolution of his style. (B)
• Day Four: The Palace of Fine Arts, Diego Rivera Mural Museum, La Ciudadela Market. Starting with The Big Three, Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, we learn of the differences in style, ideology and medium among the most famous mural artists. No where else can we see in one space, the differences between the muralists, aesthetically, ideologically and technically. In Diego Rivera’s “Rockefeller Mural”, Man at the Crossroads, we see Rivera’s overt endorsement of Communism. In the iconography, we see Fascist/capitalist vs. Soviet/Socialism ideological divisions, as well as and North/South economic and class divisions with US as technologically advanced and Mexico/Latin America as site of abundant natural resources. In José Clemente Orozco’s Catharsis, we see his dynamic expressive style and cynical view of politics and contemporary world. No clear political ideology is expressed, as compared with Rivera and Siqueiros. David Alfaro Siqueiros’, New Democracy, we see his use of “polyangular” perspective, photo-projection and collage, spray guns and synthetic paints vs. the fresco medium used by Rivera and Orozco. Here we can compare how Siqueiros addresses social injustice (war crimes, racism) vs. how Rivera does. Siqueiros’s “Cuauhtémoc cycle”, demonstrates his notion of painted “dialectics” thesis/antithesis in two panels and how image changes as the observer walks in front of it. We learn of his ideas about activating the viewer so that he/she comes to understand the mural in motion. We compare this with how Rivera and Orozco situate the viewer in relation to the mural. With Rufino Tamayo’s Birth of Nationality and Mexico Today, we see differences in style and iconography, and finally, with Jorge González Camarena, we see an example of a second generation muralist, where he has blended aspects of all of the other muralists in his work, and where the political message of his painting is more open-ended, rather than polemical. In the afternoon, we will pay a visit to The Diego Rivera Mural Museum, and we will stroll to La Ciudadela Market, to shop for traditional Mexican curios, expressions of popular art.(B)
• Day Five: Today we travel to Chapingo to see the Chapingo Agricultural School, which represents Rivera’s great “Total work of art”, where we see the mural’s relationship to its site and audience (B,L)
• Day Six: Dolores Olmedo Musuem and Xochimilco Today, we travel south as we visit the former Hacienda and home of Dolores Olmedo Patino. Today, this property is the Dolores Olmedo Museum, which houses an important collection of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo paintings. To relax, we enjoy lunch on our "trajinera" boats as we stroll through the former "chinampas" canals of Xochimilco,. Returning home, we stop at the UNAM campus, to see and better understand the notion of plastic integration, where we can compare and contrast Siqueiros, O’Gorman, and Rivera’s approach to mural art, architecture, and the mosaic medium.dimensional murals and mosaics. (B,L)
• Day Seven: Museum of Anthropology Museum of Modern Art. In the Chapultepec Park region, we visit one of the world's premier archeology museums to learn of the numerous cultures that lived in Mesoamerica, before the Spaniards arrived. The ancient Olmec, Maya, Zapotec, Toltec, Aztec are among them. After lunch we stroll across the Paseo de la Reforma to visit another world class museum: The Museum of Modern Art, Tonight we enjoy a farewell dinner. (B,D)
• OPTIONAL EXTENSION: A different treat is in store as we travel to the ancient city of Teotihuacan, to see early murals of the pre-Hispanic Era. A small but exquisite on-site museum at the ruins is dedicated to none other than: murals.

Mexican Muralists, Desmond Rochfort
Modern Mexican Painters, Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and Other Artists of the Social Realist School, MacKinley Helm