In this article, Luis Eduardo Pombo reveals himself as the first Uruguayan art critic to ideologically wrap himself in the aesthetics of David Alfaro Siqueiros. Generally, even the commentaries made by those intellectuals closest to the Mexican muralist valued his work in terms of an art in service of socialist ideals, a worn-out argument that did not assist with the discovery of an entire theoretical doctrine, which in practice Siqueiros had been building all those years. It is to this that Pombo tries to approximate himself by revolving in turn around his “dialectical-materialistic” methodology as an aesthetics with guidelines in “revolutionary psychological” premises. The columnist points out that Siqueiros’ collectivist thinking is not only opposed to the derivation of an “individualistic aesthetic,” but that he assumed it as the proper doctrine of modern art, especially “in ideology, in technique, and in science.” Its scientific nature would lay in the expulsion of all sentimentality, of any intimate expression, and of all that was “cerebral,” which in Pombo’s view, would be the dominant tone of the so-called “modern art.” However, it does not completely deprive Siqueiros’ work of a certain humanism. Beyond the social denouncements and the ideological dimensions of his ideas, the Mexican supports his landscape vision in a transformative way, a suggestive morphology with a certain dose of “mystery.”

Luis Eduardo Pombo (1903−1976) was an art critic who, due to his old friendship with Blanca Luz Brum (1905−1985)—the partner of David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896−1974) at the time—immediately established contact with the Mexican as he passed through Montevideo, during the release after his house arrest in Taxco and his collective mural work in Los Angeles, California. It is there that Pombo adopts his aesthetic and political principles, two elements that stand out in the theory and practice of his vigorous art. On the one hand, the scientifically technical and evidently revolutionary character of his work in adopting a mechanical technique in the creation of large formatted mural paintings, and on the other, the ideological and revolutionary practice of presenting an art for the masses with political undertones. These are the elements that Pombo defined that were in keeping with Siqueiros’ modernity. Ironically, however, the first element was the one that moved away from institutionalized Mexican muralism and that followed the path of traditionally crafted art that was committed to the “auratic” and “elitist” artistic notions that touched on social themes. The vision of a mechanical art (applied with an innovative torch and a compressor as instruments) that Siqueiros advocated, was modern because of the use of this type of technology, but “it is adapted as modern construction” by using cement as a canvas on large surfaces. In theory and practice, revolution and modernity would march together, as they turn away from Renaissance scholasticism by both Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. On the contrary, Siqueiros explores ways “dynamic art” can be visualized, always in motion, from the street or in the city, where it abandons the individualism attached to personal genius. In short, this dynamism is conducive to a collective work of art.