PROJECTS OF THE IUA

40b. Corpus of the Mexican muralism in America

The Mexican Revolution, beginning in 1910 and coming to an end in the 1920s, produced an oustanding form of expression that left its mark on art around the world : Mexican muralism.

The proposal of the Muralism movement, known as the Mexican Renaissance, was the development of an art form distanced from the Art for Art's Sake theory which reigned over Europe from the mid 1800s and is the foundation of art in Western culture. This theory alienates the production of art from the general public and links it firmly to the market.

Mexican muralism is one of very few exceptions that repudiate this purist theory of art by proposing and producing monumental art with educational, propagandistic, historic, epic and other varied objectives, all in pursuit of concrete social aims.

Although an enormous body of literature has been written on this subject, no exhaustive, comprehensive catalogue has been produced. This is partly due to the fact that in spite of the fact that the Mexican Revolution ended decades ago, the production of murals continues to flourish and evolve today.

The volumes of the catalogue will include dates, biographical data, titles of the paintings, the number of segment of each, the locations in buildings, subject matter, public or private institutions that commissioned restoration work, if that is the case, and an assessment of the present state of conservation. The catalogue will include photographs of each mural painting.

This project, presented by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas), was adopted by the IUA in 1997 as a category C Project.

Director : Ms Ida Rodríguez-Prampolini 1997-