Intrinsically Native

Intrinsically Native*

In speaking of U. S. art students Painter Henri Matisse once said: 'They must be great artists, they must be geniuses, why cannot they content themselves with being painters. Then some day they might be good painters, perhaps."

In Mexico things are different. Painters there are workmen; they hire out by the day, work with masons (some of them have been masons), consider themselves only as craftsmen. They live natural lives as normal men, do not exude individuality, tea and conversation, are not "salon clowns."

This is significant of the so-called Mexican Renaissance, which has occurred with-in the past few decades. Several of Mexico's greatest living artists first went to Paris where they thought they were cubists, surrealists, neo-impressionists. But when they got tired of Art for Art's sake they went home and looked around. They saw that no use was being made of native material. The official artists were but feeble, academic imitators of the Spanish school of Zuloaga. Plainly it was impossible to superimpose Spain on Mexico.

Dissatisfied, the returning painters formed a guild called the "Revolutionary Syndicate of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors" and offered to decorate buildings in a true Mexican style. With Diego Rivera (TIME, May 6) as mas ter they received a contract to paint murals for the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. For their motive they chose the Creation of the World, which was executed in monumental scale with figures twice lifesize. Unlike polite muralists of other countries their colors were not pastel tints but sombre browns, flashing reds and greens.

All this disturbed the worthies of official Mexico. Caricatured in characteristic poses, the bureaucrats were pictured as drunk, picking the pockets of symbolic figures or busy at murder and rape. Infuriated, they threatened to whitewash the walls. Students mobbed the building, stoned and scratched the murals. Finally the Minister of Education was petitioned to stop the havoc. This he did by asking the painters to "make no more targets for mischievous boys." Discouraged, the syndicate broke up, the painters fled to quieter places. But the seed of a national tradition in art had been sown. Following were the sowers:

Diego Rivera was the most journalisti cally picturesque of the syndicate. He was assailed by the press, lampooned on the stage. Souvenir hunters put snapshots of him in their kodak albums with street beggars. Indians and other scenic curiosities. Undaunted, he works on. Today he is painting what will be the world's largest mural, in the Government Palace in Mex ico City, which will picture the history of Mexico from the Spanish conquest. Painter Rivera is often visited by English speaking tourists and keeps a U. S. assistant to interpret for him.

At present his assistant is lone Robinson of California, onetime helper of U. S. Artist Rockwell Kent. In the Kent Manhattan household she lived for a year, working on colored illustrations for Voltaire's Candide. Later she went to southern France, hired a peasant's house, planned to stay and paint. The house had no hot water, no heating, no light; Artist Robinson fell sick, returned to Los Angeles, whence she went to Mexico City.

Jose Clemente Orozco started as a caricaturist. Early he gained a reputation for diabolical satire and was called the 'Mexican Goya. In the Mexican National Academy he studied painting and drew rude portraits of his masters. They told him he could not draw and sent him away. After this he worked as a newspaper artist, followed a regiment in the Carranza-Villa revolution. As a syndicate worker, he covered patio walls, stairways and crypts with enormous frescoes of a beardless Christ bearing a great cross, Saint Francis of Assisi bowing to kiss a leper, caricatures of bourgeoise ladies and their bloated escorts trampling up to Heaven on the bodies of peons. These pictures were especially mutilated.

Painter Orozco is almost a pure Spaniard. He dresses like a U. S. druggist, wears thick glasses, a huge mustache. In boyhood his left hand was blown off by a firecracker. Critics have used him as a butt for their most malicious onslaughts, attributing to him the "soul of an old prostitute," finding every vice in his drawings. Not only in Mexico has he been harassed. Once he tried to cross the border with a batch of drawings and was stopped by U. S. customs officials. They decided that the drawings were obscene and destroyed over a hundred.

Francisco Goitia lives as a recluse in the Indian village of Xochimilco on the edge of a floating garden. In his youth he went to Europe but returned like the others to build up a Mexican art tradition. During the Revolution he was staff-artist for General Angeles, antagonist of Villa. Like all Mexican artists he is concerned with suffering, has dedicated his art to the martyrdom of the Revolution. Like Michelangelo, Painter Goitia studied anatomy in dissecting rooms "to see about a flagellated back." Once he poured a pail of animal's blood over his model's back to study the spots as they would really appear Painter Goitia looks like a monk, lives frugally, paints much.

David Alfaro Siqueiros was a drummer boy in the Villa Revolution. Afterward the Carranza Government sent him to Europe to study. As inspirations he brought back photos of Italian primitives and U. S. oil derricks. When the Syndicate was formed Painter Siqueiros became its mouthpiece. Versatile, he edited the painters' newspaper, El Machete, made speeches at mass meetings, painted the Burial of a Workman which was stoned. For distraction he lay on his bed with a revolver and shot dotted-line pictures into the ceiling. At art school he ate the fruit and vegetable still-life models, saying "a real artist should know and enjoy the subjects of his paintings."

* IDOLS BEHIND ALTARS-Anita Brenner-Paysnn & Clarke.