José Clemente Orozco

Mexican art played a leading role in influencing art in America, its effect and ideological and stylistic models can be seen both in Latin American painting as well as painting from the U.S. Orozco painted murals in Pomona College of California, at the New School for Social Research of New York and at the Library of Dartmouth College, between 1930 and 1934. Together with Rivera and Siqueiros he spread not only the technique of al fresco Muralism, but also the subject matter that was emphasized - sometimes more sometimes less - of a critical view of contemporary man's condition. Orozco's paintings of his formative years were particularly studied and admired by the abstract expressionist painters. The free expressions and suggestive strenght of the muralist made an impact on, for example, Jackson Pollock with qualities that are evident in this allegory, a bit nationalistic, from the Blaisten Collection. It refers back to the subject of emblematic beasts of the pre-Columbian cosmovision, but also points out the eloquent plasticity that Orozco achieved in his easel painting. This piece was on the cover of the magazine México en el arte, No. 1, of July, 1948, and was shown in New York at the Gallery of Modern Art.

From the abundant work that Orozco produced - and that is much less well-known - there are numerous oils and drawings that, after his death, the family made known through many exhibitions. Even today the totality of his production is unknown, and pieces continue to surface, and unfortunately they are not always authentic. For reasons which are still not clear, Orozco kept many of his works while he was alive, perhaps because of his clear animosity to commercializing art: to this we can add that his work often lacks the date it was done. All of this makes it difficult to follow the artistic evolution of the painter, whose themes kept recurring during his career. This oil from the Blaisten Collection shows a female nude counterpositioned to the classical reference of a dressed figure, the polarity of the subject and the style of the lines are characteristic of the painter; it is related to the drawings he did around 1945 on the subject The Truth: a truth that he understood as "twisted, deformed, altered, mutilated and badly painted" in his reading in drama, opera and tragedy, some of which were presented in one of the cited exhibitions of the National College.