Orozco, José Clemente (1883–1949). Mexican painter, with his contemporaries
Rivera and
Siqueiros one of the trio of politically and socially committed fresco painters who were the dominant force in modern Mexican art. He was born in Ciudad Guzmán and grew up in Guadalajara and Mexico City. Originally he trained to be an architect, but he abandoned this idea after losing his left hand in an accident in 1900 and turned instead to painting, studying under Dr
Atl at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, 1906–14. Following the first outburst of revolutionary activity in Mexico in 1910 (which was to last on and off until 1920), Orozco began working as a political cartoonist. In 1912 he began a series of water-colours called ‘House of Tears’ dealing with prostitutes (a favourite symbol of human degradation for Orozco). The angry reaction of critics and moralists to these works was one of his reasons for leaving for the USA, where he spent three unhappy and unproductive years, 1917–20.
His career as a muralist began after he returned to Mexico in 1920. The country was now relatively stable under the government of Alvaro Obregón, who encouraged paintings on nationalistic subjects as a way of creating a positive identity for the country after years of turmoil. Orozco's first murals were in the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (National Training School), 1923–4. They were controversial because of their caricatural style, and all except
Maternity and
The Rich Banquet while the Workers Quarrel were subsequently destroyed or altered. His style matured towards a greater monumentality in frescos in the Casa de los Azulejos (House of Tiles), Mexico City (1926), and in a second series at the National Training School (1926–7). The work brought him little recognition, however, so from 1927 to 1934 (broken by a brief trip to Europe in 1932) he again worked in the USA. This time he was much more successful than during his first stay, carrying out a number of important mural commissions, most notably a cycle for Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, on
The Coming and
The Return of Quetzalcoatl (1932–4). This huge scheme showed his outlook crystallizing into a contrast between a pagan paradise and a capitalist hell. Unlike Rivera and Siqueiros, Orozco did not align himself with a particular political viewpoint (the Mexican Communist Party called him a ‘bourgeois sceptic'), but his work had an intense humanitarian mission.
Orozco returned to Mexico in 1934 with a big reputation after his success in the USA, and he spent most of the rest of his life engaged on mural projects in Mexico City and Guadalajara, the country's second city. His last work,
Hidalgo and the Liberation of Mexico, for the Senate Chamber of the Palace of Government in Guadalajara, was finished shortly before his death in 1949. In his last years his work became ever more violent in expression, moved by a passionate concern for the suffering and miseries of mankind. Four years before his death, Orozco's autobiography was published; it was translated into English in 1962. His studio in Guadalajara is now a museum dedicated to him; a commemorative statue of Orozco stands in the park opposite.
