Seize All Walls’ presents sketches of the artist’s most important works.
The first lines charged with strength, with a revolutionary spirit and a demand for social justice, which are testimony to the creative process of José Clemente Orozco, are part of the exhibition that commemorates the 140th anniversary of the birth of the Mexican muralist, at the Palace of Fine Arts.
Some of those strokes are seen with time marks, annotations and paint stains.
The artist was surrounded by stories, trips and censorship, like the one he faced when painting his murals at the National Preparatory School, where a group of students and ladies from society scratched and attacked his work, like that of the other muralists.
This was the reason why he had to quit his job even in 1923, but he finished it in 1926.
The situation led to the resignation of José Vasconcelos as Secretary of Public Education, explained Víctor Palacios, curator of the exhibition Seize All Walls.
Drafts by José Clemente Orozco, inaugurated this Wednesday at the Palacio de Bellas Artes.
He added that a similar case happened to Orozco with his mural of the Supreme Court, where feeling violated and exhibited, they thanked him, leaving their mark on a work where he presents justice lying on an armchair while politicians make the theirs involved in corruption.
In order not to cause a scandal, they then gave him the task of painting the Hospital de Jesús, one of his last works.
In the country’s highest cultural venue, more than 180 sketches are displayed in a variety of formats, supports, and techniques, including gouache, tempera, ink, pencil drawing, and charcoal, in a chronological line, as witnesses and documents. of the design of the most important murals that the artist made both in Mexico and in the United States.
Regarding the title of the exhibition, the curator explained that it refers to the moment when, after finishing the mural in the Auditorium of the University of Guadalajara, someone asked him what was left to do after having painted this marvelous piece of work, along Orozco replied that he had to “seize all the walls.”