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Clemente Orozco's giant paintings

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Hotu Matua

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I wanted to share with you this section of a huge mural painting of José Clemente Orozo, paintined on the curved walls of the Government Palace in Guadalajara, Mexico.

I was very impressed with the size of it and took this photograph.

The painter, contemporary of collectivitsts as Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and David Alfaro Siqueiros, never seem to have shared entirely their ideas.

He died without giving an interpretation of his work.

4486960271_080432e235_o.jpg

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Yeah, he makes imperialists of all kind appear grotesque.

He appears to me as an anarchist in this painting.

While he stresses fascism and comunism and religion as totalitarian and anti-man, he also includes symbols of the USA.

The USA has been perceived in Latin America, not without reason, as a power that has sustained fascits bloody dictators across the region.

I specially loved the figure below, the man with the Soviet and the nazi symbols on his nose, holding a fake handshake, as indicating that the fraternity promoted by collectivism is false or fake.

Clemente-Orozco did not paint happy workers in Soviet paradises, or happy primitive Indians being conquered by Western technology and greed, as Diego Rivera did.

He painted the forces of evil in all its versions and then, the individual playing a central (though mysterious) role.

For example, the gigantic central figure of the mural I just posted is Hidalgo winding a flame like a Mexican Prometeus. Hidalgo was a priest who was excomunicated due to his views and abolished slavery long before Lincoln.

Look:

4486939571_7ff6535e34.jpg

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In the Hospicio Cabanas, Clemente Orozco did the Mexican equivalent of Micheangelo's Capela Sixtina, painting all the surface of a huge building.

He used all sort of evil figures and individuals in pain, grouping together Christian and Indian gods, Spanish and Indian authoritarism.

His art comes to his cenit, though, in the painings made over the curved inner surface of the central dome.

Here we see a man in flames. The killing of the individual. The destruction of man as an individual. The final result of the operation of all those evil forces.

Look:

4495172340_002c61d393_o.jpg

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Yeah, he makes imperialists of all kind appear grotesque.

He appears to me as an anarchist in this painting.

While he stresses fascism and comunism and religion as totalitarian and anti-man, he also includes symbols of the USA.

The USA has been perceived in Latin America, not without reason, as a power that has sustained fascits bloody dictators across the region.

I specially loved the figure below, the man with the Soviet and the nazi symbols on his nose, holding a fake handshake, as indicating that the fraternity promoted by collectivism is false or fake.

Clemente-Orozco did not paint happy workers in Soviet paradises, or happy primitive Indians being conquered by Western technology and greed, as Diego Rivera did.

He painted the forces of evil in all its versions and then, the individual playing a central (though mysterious) role.

For example, the gigantic central figure of the mural I just posted is Hidalgo winding a flame like a Mexican Prometeus. Hidalgo was a priest who was excomunicated due to his views and abolished slavery long before Lincoln.

<snip>

In the Hospicio Cabanas, Clemente Orozco did the Mexican equivalent of Micheangelo's Capela Sixtina, painting all the surface of a huge building.

He used all sort of evil figures and individuals in pain, grouping together Christian and Indian gods, Spanish and Indian authoritarism.

His art comes to his cenit, though, in the painings made over the curved inner surface of the central dome.

Here we see a man in flames. The killing of the individual. The destruction of man as an individual. The final result of the operation of all those evil forces.

<snip>

The genus of art works is: man-made objects which present a selective recreation of reality according to the artist's metaphysical value-judgments, by means of a specific material medium.

Romantic art is the fuel and the spark plug of a man's soul; its task is to set a soul on fire and never let it go out.

Grant you, the genus of art work does not delineate specifically to Romantic art, albeit, when looking for something to hang on a wall by which is passed by frequently, José Clemente Orozo is not likely to be in the top ten list for consideration here.

Perspicacity by Rene Magritte has been the background picture at work for over 5 years now. http://www.famous-painters.org/Rene-Magrit...rspicacity.shtm

post-7393-1270514294_thumb.jpg

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Thank you, dream weaver.

The link is not working for me. I will try again later.

I like the painting attached as a thumbnail. Clever.

What do you specifically mean by "the background picture at work for over 5 years"?

The link just takes you to a website sporting the same image that was uploaded as an attachment on submission.

The background picture is the 'desktop wallpaper' or what you see on your computer monitor when no other applications are running.

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