Hannah Ryggen admired the Mexican murals not only because of their powerful visual language. The revolutionary Muralists also created politically explosive works of art.

Be it eman­ci­pated images of women, power abuse or the horrors of war: From 1923 onwards, Hannah Ryggen wove large-size tapes­tries that were polit­i­cally explo­sive. She felt it impor­tant to make sure the state­ments by her monu­mental formats were acces­sible to the general public instead of the ideas getting lost on the walls of private homes.

The key Mexican Modernist painters also set great store on ensuring public visi­bility for their monu­mental wall paint­ings, the “Murales” as they were called and which they created at roughly the same time as Hannah Ryggen was busy weaving her tapes­tries. However, unlike the Scan­di­na­vian artist, who took a clear stand on inter­na­tional conflicts and current world issues in her woven works, artists such as Diego Rivera and his contem­po­raries focused almost exclu­sively on Mexico’s domestic polit­ical scene.

The manifesto called for the establishment of a social art form

In 1924 Mexican artist David Alfaro Siqueiros wrote a fire­brand piece for “el machete” (a Mexican daily) in which he said a stance should be taken cham­pi­oning the country’s indige­nous popu­la­tion and protesting against the threat of a mili­tary coup led by Pres­i­dent Adolfo de la Huertas (Abb. 1). More­over, in his so-called “Mani­fest of Workers, Painters and Sculp­tors” Siqueiros called for the creation of a social art form to the benefit of the indige­nous popu­la­tion and to spread the aesthetics of indige­nous art as the basis for modern art in Mexico. From an artistic view­point this demand entailed turning away from Euro­pean Modernism as the all-embracing role model and instead concen­trating on Mexico’s national history – meaning a kind of return to “their own” cultural tradi­tions.

Sindi­cato de Artistas, Pintores y Grabadores Revolu­cionarios, Image via googleuser­con­tent.com

David Alfaro Siqueiros, Auszug aus „el machete“, Image via metmu­seum.org

Siqueiros’ demand can be attrib­uted to the collapse in acad­emic training for artists during the Mexican Revo­lu­tion, during which Mexican culture was neglected and the Euro­pean art forms admired as the only true art. The mani­festo was supported by promi­nent artists such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Xavier Guer­rero.

The goal of the syndi­cate of workers, painters and sculp­tors that emerged from this was to influ­ence prevailing art tastes through the medium of public art and in this contribute to popular educa­tion and above all the social class struggle. In this regard and under the sign of a return to the founders of Mexican art, the mani­festo addressed the country’s indige­nous popu­la­tion, which had been subject to centuries of humil­i­a­tion, and whose iden­tity emerged as the key motif of Mexico’s post-revo­lu­tionary art.

José Clemente Orozco, Gods of the Modern World, Credit Cour­tesy of the Hood Museum of Art, Dart­mouth College, 2012 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City, Image via nyt.​com

Diego Rivera, Mural at the Palacio Nacional (Mexiko), 1929, Image via Wiki­Com­mons

This new approach was real­ized through large-format works such as the “Murales”, painted on the outside or inside walls of public build­ings in Mexico, some­thing that amounted to a para­digm shift. ). Many of these publicly acces­sible works addressed histor­ical events and the polit­ical strug­gles in Mexico at the time. At the same time, they reflected the artists’ socialist convic­tions. The “Murales” were financed by the Mexican govern­ment through Minister of Educa­tion José Vascon­celos with a view to conveying a specific national history to the largely illit­erate poorer stratum of the popu­la­tion. The fact that the Mexican govern­ment helped fund the creation of the “Murales” shows how their monu­mental format also fulfilled a pres­ti­gious role.

The motifs showed a supposedly official version of history

With their picto­rial program, as formu­lated in exem­plary terms in 1935 by Diego Rivera in his painting at the Palacio Nacional, the Mural­ists ideal­ized and instru­men­tal­ized the indige­nous popu­la­tion. In the scenes and narra­tives they took, the repre­sented the purport­edly offi­cial version of the nation’s history and present. By subjec­tively depicting the Revo­lu­tionary events, the Mural­ists took an artistic stance cham­pi­oning the post-Revo­lu­tion Mexican state and constructed what they claimed was a national cultural iden­tity.

Diego Rivera, Civi­lización Totonaca, 1929, Palacio Nacional (México), Image via Wiki­Com­mons

Diego Rivera, En el arsenal, 1928, Image via blogspot.com

Among all these exam­ples of images we can discern social and polit­ical messages as well as the glori­fi­ca­tion of national values, above all in connec­tion with patri­otic heroes. The Mexican “Murales” are thus the visu­al­iza­tion of the new national focus of Mexican art that its cham­pions called for – a painted mani­festo. The Mural­ists painted mani­festos just as Hannah Ryggen wove them, with the differ­ence that unlike Ryggen’s tapes­tries the murals were intended to promote the national inter­ests of their home country.

Diego Rivera, Dream of a Sunday After­noon in Alameda Park (Detail), Image via Wiki­Com­mons
Hannah Ryggen, Fiske ved gjeldens hav (Fishing in the Sea of Debt), 1933 © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2019, Photo: Øystein Thor­valdsen, Cour­tesy of Henie Onstad Kunst­senter