Alfaro Siqueiros, David

19th-20th Century Mexican

Born on 29 December 1896 in the state of Chihuaha in northern Mexico, after enrolling at Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, the young Siqueiros studied art in the evenings at the San Carlos Academy where he developed his creativity and revolutionary ideas.

In 1914, during the Mexican Revolution, Siqueiros joined the Constitutional Army. At the end of the conflict he travelled to Europe to further his training in painting thanks to a pension as a war captain. He continued painting and became involved in union movements, ending up as General Secretary of Mexico’s Confederación Sindical Unitaria. He was sent to prison on several occasions due to his political activism. In 1930, while serving a one-year sentence, he resumed his painting.

An avant-garde artist since the first steps of his career—as reported in an article called “Three Appeals for the Current Guidance of the New Generation of American Painters and Sculptors” featured in the first and only issue of the magazine Vida-Americana. Revista norte centro y sud-americana de vanguardia (Spain, May 1921)—he never renounced the idea of experimenting with new materials, proposing unexpected dynamisms, and subverting the parameters of form.

In 1936 he travelled to Spain to take part in the Civil War, being promoted to the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. After returning to Mexico he was involved in the political fight against Trotsky with the result of a new arrest. He was exonerated and travelled to Chile, before returning to Mexico in 1944.

Around 1960, Siqueiros already had a long history to his credit within Mexican muralism, in which he was involved since the 1920s. He created his innovative mural works at Ciudad Universitaria (1952-1954), where his approach broke from the usual conventions of mural painting by incorporating the third dimension, that is to say, using sculpture techniques. It was then when Siqueiros coined an expression that included his new findings, giving those mural works a hybrid term of his own invention: “sculpture paintings.”

In 1966 Siqueiros was distinguished with the National Art Award, and in 1967 he was invited to the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Socialist Revolution in the Soviet Union, where he travelled in the company of his wife. He died on 6 January 1974 in Cuernavaca, Morelos.

David Alfaro Siqueiros