Page 59 - Studio International - January 1965

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were some pre-jail paintings that showed preoccupation of social theatre in Mexico' in the vestibule of the theatre
with pure form and colour. His extraordinarily sculp­ of the National Actors' Association; and there are two
tural mural techniques had been reduced and softened, unfinished murals abroad: Homage to the children of
but they continued to exist. One felt greater pre­ those who died in the Sierra Maestra-a Castro­
occupation with colour, a subtler texture, nostalgia for revolution mural in Havana; and a project for a wall of
the countryside, and above all a more genuine com­ a theatre in New Delhi. Presumably he will return to
passion than he seemed to allow himself in his earlier these and finish them. Evidently he feels that he is
tub thumping. His master-craftsmanship is confirmed; essentially a muralist, and that whatever easel paintings
but, although he protests that his politics remain he did before his jail sentence were in fact essays for
exactly the same as before, his emotions seem to murals.
have deepened. One hopes that he will go back to mural painting with
One of the finest jail paintings is of a boy in a cap that a more fluid technique, and that his newfound com­
is pure Millet; so also is a peasant woman in movement passion will not get lost again under the facile crudities
as if blown on the wind. There is a whorled dark of Marxist doctrines. The sheer mastery of his media,
circular sun against an orange sky set above brown, and the ebullient physical vitality of this veteran of
rocky hills that reminds one of Van Gogh. From sixty-eight are in themselves impressive. He is some­
canvases with Turneresque subtleties of colouring, his thing of an actor, indeed his gestures and stance
work shades away into pure calligraphy. But every now remind one of Sir Ralph Richardson. His force of
and then we are brought back to politics and satire and draughtsmanship and composition have given him
irony, as if Siqueiros could not quite allow himself to mastery over walls. Put his emphatic murals beside the
move away from his old work and his old violent more effete examples of art for art's sake, and there
expression. When he paints Christ, it is with dynamic seems to be a good case for his condemnation of coffee­
revolutionary technique, though he writes beneath one shop art, although it might also be possible to think that
canvas with unintentioned irony perhaps, 'Only he who there are other artistic areas worth developing that have
believes in Christ should paint Christ.' affinity neither with materialist polemic nor with
People are asking where he will go from here. When dilettante aesthetics. Many serious critics (though not
he was jailed he was at work on several unfinished Mexicans. for whom their 'big four' are beyond
murals besides the one in Chapultepec Castle-which reproach) still think that the value of what Siqueiros is
is called From Porfirm (from the dictatorship of trying to express, and his degree of artistic maturity
Porfirio Diaz) to the Revolution. There is also a 'history remain debatable points. ■
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