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[Letter] [1933, Junio?], Buenos Aires [to] Blanca Luz Brum
1933Other than the intimate details of the communication between Siqueiros and Brum, this letter provides extremely interesting insights into Siqueiros’s public relations in Buenos Aires, as well as his opinions and intentions concerning the local [...]ICAA Record ID: 1238660 -
[Letter] 1925 Junio 17, México [a] Secretario de Educacion Puig Cassauranc
1925David Alfaro Siqueiros sent a letter to the Minister of Public Education, José Manuel Puig Cassauranc, when he was dismissed from his ministry job as professor of drawing and manual works, for which he was paid three pesos a day. His dismissal was [...]ICAA Record ID: 786037 -
[Letter] 1934 Enero 11, Isla de Trinidad [to] Blanca Luz Brum
1934In this letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros tells Blanca Luz Brum that the Troubadour—the ship on which he sailed from Buenos Aires in December 1933—had arrived in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. Siqueiros talks about the book he wrote on the trip [...]ICAA Record ID: 1238692 -
[Letter] 1936 December [to] Pollock, Sandy, Lehman
1936In this brief letter, David Alfaro Siqueiros advises Jackson Pollock and his team that the studio in New York will be closed during the day while he prepares for his forthcoming exhibition in Manhattan. Siqueiros explains that he needs to be alone to [...]ICAA Record ID: 751122 -
[Letter] 1938 Abril 27, [España to] María Teresa León, [México]
1938David Alfaro Siqueiros writes a letter to Teresa León from a military command post in Spain during the Civil War, telling her of his combat experiences at the front and comparing procedures there with artistic work. He sees that in both there are [...]ICAA Record ID: 786046 -
[Letter] 1964 Julio 3, México D. F. [to] Julio Scherer García
1964In 1964, journalist Julio Scherer García received the manuscript of David Alfaro Siqueiros’s autobiography. Three years earlier, in 1961, Scherer García had gone to Lecumberri Prison and managed to obtain some 387 pages. Siqueiros asked him to [...]ICAA Record ID: 751181 -
[Letter] Al Comité Central del Partido Comunista del Uruguay
1933While stating his unflinching loyalty to the communist cause, David Alfaro Siqueiros also provides some important autobiographical information in this letter to the Uruguayan Communist Party Central Committee. He talks about being under house arrest [...]ICAA Record ID: 1238917 -
3 llamamientos de orientación actual a los pintores y escultores de la nueva generación americana
1921With his manifesto, David Alfaro Siqueiros sought to position the avant-garde project anew, doing away with belated modernism and impressionism, in favor of Cubo-Futurist expressions and the incipient eruption of Dadaism. This eagerness for [...]ICAA Record ID: 801659 -
A los soldados, a los obreros y a los campesinos : Los tres somos víctimas, los tres somos hermanos : Farsa en varios actos titulada : La caída de los ricos y la construcción de un nuevo orden social
1924Following the prologue to the farce “The Fall of the Rich and the Construction of a New Social Order,” is a scene in the first act entitled, “The Army of the Soldiers, Workers and Peasants.” In a triumphal panorama of the socialist revolution [...]ICAA Record ID: 764028 -
A quienes lucharon por mi libertad con mi más profundo reconocimiento
1964After spending four years in prison in Mexico for an obscure “crime of social dissolution,” Siqueiros was released in July 1964. He then wrote this letter to all the friends in various parts of the world who had demanded his freedom. In [...]ICAA Record ID: 1238740 -
A Siqueiros, al partir
1961This printed poster is divided into two parts. In the upper left-hand corner, a black-and-white photograph shows a close-up of a man behind bars looking straight ahead. In the background there is a two-story structure with white walls. To the right [...]ICAA Record ID: 864589 -
Aclaración del C. de Defensa Proletaria
1928The Comité de Defensa Proletaria [Committee for the Defense of the Proletariat] wrote to the editorial board of El Machete magazine regarding the reports published in the press about the events organized by the Bloque Obrero [Workers’ Block] in [...]ICAA Record ID: 776692 -
Al margen del manifiesto del Sindicato de Pintores y Escultores
1924This document analyzes the national repercussions that the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos, Pintores y Escultores [SOTPE, Union of Technical Workers, Painters and Sculptors] had on an art scene that was then dominated by individualism. Siqueiros [...]ICAA Record ID: 763287 -
Carta a Jorge Enciso
1944In a letter to Jorge Enciso, addressed to the Dirección de Monumentos Nacionales [National Monuments Administration], Siqueiros announces that Javier Rojo Gómez has commissioned him to paint murals in the tower of what was known as the former [...]ICAA Record ID: 786065 -
Carta a Orozco : en presencia de su actual exposición de pinturas, dibujos y grabados : en la casa del Colegio Nacional, (del 25 de septiembre pasado al 25 de octubre en curso)
1944In 1944, David Alfaro Siqueiros wrote an open letter to José Clemente Orozco in which he admitted that he could identify the different stages of his work. Siqueiros begins by saying that an artist’s work is not an individual creation but the [...]ICAA Record ID: 760439 -
Carta abierta a Jaime Torres Bodet : Secretario de Educación Pública : no hay tal dirección de Educación Estética! : la acción de Carlos Pellicer y sus colaboradores se oponen al programa general de la Secretaría
1945This is an open letter written by David Alfaro Siqueiros to the Minister of Education Jaime Torres Bodet that explains the discrepancy between his humanistic, revolutionary discourse on the one hand, and the function of the Dirección de Educación [...]ICAA Record ID: 760412 -
Con Siqueiros
1952In this interview, David Alfaro Siqueiros states that in the exhibition Arte mexicano: desde tiempos precolombinos hasta nuestros días [Mexican Art: From Pre-Colombian Times to Our Days], contemporary Mexican painting had generated both supportive [...]ICAA Record ID: 780039 -
Contra la Corriente
1933This cover of the “Revista multicolor de los sábados” [full-color Saturday Magazine], a supplement of the daily newspaper, Crítica, features a print of the work Contra la Corriente [Against the Current] by David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974 [...]ICAA Record ID: 733143 -
Contrato para la ejecución de una pintura mural que celebra por una ...
1951The Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social (IMSS) [Mexican Institute of Social Security] was created at the beginning of the hospital construction project; it was a decentralized entity with legal status located in the nation’s capital. Although [...]ICAA Record ID: 796041 -
Crítica a la crítica del Arte : A propósito de un reciente artículo de Margarita Nelken sobre la obra total de Diego Rivera
1949In his long essay, Siqueiros defends Diego Rivera’s work in response to Margarita Nelken’s article on the latter’s retrospective exhibition at Bellas Artes published in the latest issue of Cuadernos Americanos. He accuses Nelken of being “ [...]ICAA Record ID: 774903 -
Declaraciones del Sindicato de Pintores y Escultores
1924In an open letter to the newspaper, David Alfaro Siqueiros makes a number of statements about the article published in the same paper defending students’ rights in terms of the paintings at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (ENP). Siqueiros [...]ICAA Record ID: 755362 -
Diego M. Rivera pintor de América
1921David Alfaro Siqueiros begins his article by saying that for all the moving cosmopolitanism of this modern painter’s creations, Diego Rivera’s œuvre is essentially Mexican. Siqueiros claims that it is a huge mistake to classify true Mexican [...]ICAA Record ID: 760474 -
Diego Rivera pintor de cámara del gobierno de México
1935David Alfaro Siqueiros attacks the implacable enemy of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) [League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists], the Trotskyite Diego Rivera, “leader and supporter of the Fourth International in Mexico [...]ICAA Record ID: 774385 -
Dos casos de violación al derecho de propiedad
1924The author condemns the double standard with which two property rights cases were adjudicated. Siqueiros compares the destruction of the offices of La revista de Yucatán [Yucatan Magazine] by an angry crowd to the attack by a group of dentistry [...]ICAA Record ID: 764072 -
Ejercicio plástico
1933Indeed, by way of a manifesto, this document is signed by the Equipo Poligráfico Ejecutor [Polygraphic Work Team], made up of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Lino Enea Spilimbergo, Enrique Lázaro, Juan C. Castagnino, and Antonio Berni. The article [...]ICAA Record ID: 733109 -
El arte al servicio del proletariado
1931Given the circumstances of the time, David Alfaro Siqueiros advocated that art should be transparent and dedicated to the struggle; it should be a tool for propaganda that was also open to technical innovation. In his opinion, pure art should wait [...]ICAA Record ID: 822471 -
El Colegio Nacional y la vacante de José Clemente Orozco
1959David Alfaro Siqueiros attempts to answer the question: “If you were nominated by the El Colegio Nacional to replace José Clemente Orozco, what would you say?” He replies in a long, complex, four-page essay. He eschews a yes or a no answer and [...]ICAA Record ID: 752764 -
El derrumbe del coraje
1933In this 1933 article published in the Argentinian literary magazine, Crítica: Revista Multicolor de los Sábados,edited by Jorge Luis Borges and Ulyses Petit de Murat, Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros narrates a story of his time as a [...]ICAA Record ID: 733809 -
El jurado de los intelectuales enemigos del pueblo : continuación de la farsa “La caída de los ricos y la construcción del nuevo orden social
1924Act one, scene two of this farce is entitled “A jury [to try] the reactionary intellectuals and capricious intellectual revolutionaries.” The figures to be judged and the extras, as well as the wailing chorus, have the actual names of numerous [...]ICAA Record ID: 764063 -
El movimiento actual de la pintura en México
1923This is the first of a four-part article on the technical nature of the Mexican painting movement. Violent aesthetic transformations had occurred in the last few years while art criticism against painters oscillated between grand praise and fury. [...]ICAA Record ID: 815178 -
El movimiento actual de la pintura en México : El egoísmo individualista
1923This is the second of four articles on the nature of the current Mexican painting movement. The article concerns the celebrated individuality that incites our painters, given the supposition that originality is a painter’s greatest asset. The [...]ICAA Record ID: 815200 -
El movimiento actual de la pintura en México : Los Retardatarios.- El Clasicismo.- El Academismo y sus falsas glorias.- La Anarquía.- El Nacimiento del “MEXICANISMO”
1923This is the third of four articles on the nature of the current painting movement in Mexico. It classifies those painters and writers as retrogressive, who continue to paint under outdated and foreign influences without contributing to the local [...]ICAA Record ID: 815219 -
El Sindicato de pintores y escultores combatirá en “El Machete”
1924In this brief article, Siqueiros, the secretary of the Sindicato de Pintores y Escultores [SOTPE, Painters and Sculptors Union], reports that the painters laid off from their work on public buildings due to the machinations of “reactionary” [...]ICAA Record ID: 764085 -
En el orden burgués reinante hay que buscar la causa de la decadencia arquitectónica contemporánea
1924In this document David Alfaro Siqueiros reflects upon the nexus between society and its aesthetic production, particularly with regard to the status of architecture under the bourgeois order. The article is directed toward the officials in charge of [...]ICAA Record ID: 764051 -
Función de la fotografía
1945This profound essay by the muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros was prompted by what critics had said about Manuel Álvarez Bravo’s exhibition at the Sociedad de Arte Moderno. Siqueiros describes the critiques as a useless form of photo-literature [...]ICAA Record ID: 760429 -
Función del Colegio Nacional : no es la de reproductor y amplificador : debe hacer una tarea de creación en el orden de la cultura
1945In this article David Alfaro Siqueiros denounces and criticizes the Colegio Nacional. The charter and rules were written by Octavio Vejar Vázquez who was Minister of Education at the time, and whom the painter considers to be mediocre. Siqueiros [...]ICAA Record ID: 760418 -
Hacia la plástica integral por medio de la revolución
1934In this article, Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros explains his vision of art history which, in his view, wavers between moments of socialization (or social integration) and moments of individualism (or decadence). It is on those grounds that [...]ICAA Record ID: 1208204 -
Hacia una nueva plástica integral
1948This article by David Alfaro Siqueiros is a theoretical analysis of the Mexican muralist movement, whose principal characteristic (and what differentiated it from the rest of the international trends) was its “functional political purpose.” [...]ICAA Record ID: 799548 -
La arquitectura internacional a la zaga de la mala pintura
1954In forty paragraphs, David Alfaro Siqueiros outlines the process of artistic integration of Mexican architecture and painting that produced the Ciudad Universitaria, the Presidente Juárez Apartment Blocks and the Museo Experimental El Eco. For [...]ICAA Record ID: 786079 -
La crítica del arte como pretexto literario o el monóculo del Artepurismo de París en México : A propósito del dilema : formalismo o nuevo realismo en el arte de la pintura
1948David Alfaro Siqueiros describes and simultaneously defines the four positions or trends in the visual arts existing in the world. He wonders if the theoretical proposals coincide with the work of art, and chooses to explain only two: the non-realism [...]ICAA Record ID: 733030 -
La escultura policromada : así lo presentó ante el mundo artístico el mexicano David Alfaro Siqueiros
1995In this lucid text, Mexican mural artist David Alfaro Siqueiros describes Colombian sculptor Rodrigo Arenas Betancourt, a young man at the time, as a talented artist and pioneer of sculpture in Mexico. Siqueiros explains that Betancourt Arenas’s [...]ICAA Record ID: 1100301 -
La ofensiva contra los comunistas : Arbitrario cese del compañero Siqueiros
1925The article reproduces a letter from David Alfaro Siqueiros to José Manuel Puig Casauranc, the Minister of Public Education (SEP) regarding the painter’s dismissal from his position as professor of drawing and manual crafts on June 10, 1925. [...]ICAA Record ID: 764177 -
La Trinidad de los sinvergüenzas : Prólogo de la farsa titulada: La caída de los ricos y la construcción del nuevo orden social
1924This farce was written in verse and consists of a prologue and four parts. The action takes place in Mexico City. On a throne of clouds rests a trinity: a Mexican politician, “the father devil;” a European capitalist, “the grateful son;” and [...]ICAA Record ID: 764016 -
Las pedradas como un sustituto de la razón
1924David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco and Xavier Guerrero signed this article in which they refute the assertions published by the Federación de Estudiantes Preparatorianos [Federation of Preparatory Students] and they list, one after [...]ICAA Record ID: 758002 -
Llamamiento al proletariado. ¿cómo abatir a la prensa burguesa?
1924David Alfaro Siqueiros, writing in El Machete, invites the proletariat to discuss their problems. His goal is to counter the middle-class press, where the disenfranchised are unrepresented. The article explains that the walls of public buildings have [...]ICAA Record ID: 751092 -
Los catedráticos reaccionarios inculcan a la juventud ideas contrarias a la revolución que por lástima les sigue dando de comer : Los murciélagos y las momias pretenden impedir el desarrollo de las pinturas revolucionarias
1924Act two, scene one of this farce is entitled “The mummies and the bats give their opinion on revolutionary paintings.” Some of the names of the figures from the prior scene are repeated, although this time, they are divided: fresh and dried [...]ICAA Record ID: 764078 -
Los vehículos de la pintura dialéctico-subversiva : Experiencias técnicas del Bloque de Pintores (Sección Los Ángeles)
1932This is a typewritten copy of the lecture given by David Alfaro Siqueiros at the John Reed Club in Hollywood on September 2, 1932. Siqueiros talks about the creation of what he called the Los Angeles “Mural Painters’ Block” [BPM: Bloque de [...]ICAA Record ID: 1238676 -
Manifiesto del Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos Pintores y Escultores
1923The Manifesto of the Sindicato de Obreros Técnicos Pintores y Escultores (SOTPE) [Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors Union] was published in El Machete toward the end of June 1924. It was an attempt to warn the proletariat and the indigenous [...]ICAA Record ID: 751080 -
Memorial al señor arquitecto Carlos Lazo : gerente general de las obras en la ciudad universitaria : sobre el problema de mis murales en la rectoría y en la Facultad de Ciencias Químicas
1953David Alfaro Siqueiros sends the architect Carlos Lazo, project manager at Ciudad Universitaria (UNAM) in Mexico City, three documents about the scaffolding he has erected and the mural he is executing at the university’s Rectoría [President’s [...]ICAA Record ID: 786058 -
Mi respuesta a seis preguntas del campo pro realista
1949The art critic Antonio Rodríguez asks David Alfaro Siqueiros to respond to the question: does a contradiction exist between the theory and practice of the painter Siqueiros? Rodríguez elaborates with six follow-up questions. First, the author [...]ICAA Record ID: 760450