Jose Clemente Orozco (1883 - 1949) was a Mexican plastic artist, best known for his work as a muralist, although he also made works in lithography and caricatures. He attended the School of Agriculture, where his talent for drawing topographic maps stood out. In addition, Orozco tried to direct his artistic talent towards architecture.
He is one of the most famous Mexican artists of the muralist current. His work had strong theoretical foundations and his work consistently depicted human suffering and tragedy. He parted ways with machines that were persistent themes for his contemporaries.
Orozco promoted his leftist political leanings with his paintings, especially representing the interests of proletarians and peasants. His style tended towards the grotesque representation of characters, infusing a tone of darkness into his work..
He was one of the few muralists who also reflected his work in frescoes. He was among the founders of the Colegio Nacional de México in 1943.
In 2010, the MoMA in New York awarded the legacy of José Clemente Orozco with an exhibition in which they toured his work. He was the third Mexican selected by this museum to show his work.
Google also made him a Doodle as a tribute to his legacy, for the 134th anniversary of his birth, on November 23, 2017.
José Clemente Orozco died at the age of 65 as a result of a heart attack. His remains rest in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons in the capital of Mexico.
Some of his most important works are: Omniscience, which is in La Casa de los Azulejos in Mexico City; Catharsis, which is in the Palacio de Bellas Artes, also in the Mexican capital; Y Miguel Hidalgo, found on the stairs of the Government Palace of Guadalajara.
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José Clemente Orozco was born on November 23, 1883 in Zapotlán el Grande, which is now called Ciudad Guzmán, in the State of Jalisco, Mexico..
He was one of the four children of Irineo Orozco Vázquez with Rosa Juliana Flores Navarro. Orozco was in his hometown until he was two years old, from there his family settled in Guadalajara. Five years later, his parents decided to make their way in the Mexican capital to improve the quality of life for the family.
Colors flooded José Clemente's life from very early on. His father had a factory of dyes, colorants and soaps, but Irineo not only was dedicated to the trade, but he was also editor of a medium entitled The bee, that he reproduced in his own printing house.
Those were not the only stimuli that Orozco received during his childhood. Her mother painted and sang, she also taught other women. Especially Rosa, one of José Clemente's sisters, shared those artistic inclinations with her mother.
Orozco received the first letters at home. It was her mother who provided her with basic instruction, she managed that at 4 years of age José Clemente could read and write.
Despite the fact that his parents worked hard and constantly, the economy was collapsed by the Mexican Revolution, which affected all sectors of national life. That is why the family had to always lead a humble life.
José Clemente Orozco attended the Escuela Anexa de la Normal, where teachers were trained. Coincidentally, he was a short distance from the printing house where illustrator José Guadalupe Posada worked. Since he learned about his work, the boy became interested in art.
Later, Orozco began studying in the afternoon shift at the Academia San Carlos, to try to pursue his new found artistic vocation. The influence that Posada's work had on his career was always recognized and praised by Orozco.
In 1897, at the insistence of his father, Orozco moved to San Jacinto to study at the Agricultural School and put art aside. There the only link he maintained with his vocation was the drawing of topographic maps with which he also obtained extra money.
When Orozco was 21 years old, he suffered an accident handling gunpowder on Independence Day. There he lost his left hand, since he suffered from gangrene and had to amputate it entirely to save the rest of his arm..
During those years his father died, a victim of rheumatic fever, so Orozco felt free to dedicate himself to painting. Although at the same time he had to find some jobs that allowed him to be the economic supporter of the home, such as that of architectural draftsman, post-mortem portraitist and also in the graphic workshop of various print media such as that of The Impartial.
At that time, José Clemente Orozco put aside his architecture studies and in 1906 he devoted himself to studying art full time at the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts and was there intermittently for approximately 8 years..
It wasn't until 1909 that Orozco decided that he would only live off his art. At the academy he received classes from Antonio Fabrés, who instructed young people with the guidance of his native Europe; however, Mexicans wanted to find their own pictorial identity.
At the San Carlos Academy, Orozco met some very important artists in his life such as Gerardo Murillo, who called himself Dr. Atl, who proposed that Mexican art should detach itself from European ballast and show its own landscapes, colors, and plastic traditions..
Orozco began to experiment with typical scenes of the poor neighborhoods and representative colors of the Mexican reality. This is how the rebirth of Mexican muralism began, led by young people who were looking for an artistic truth that they could feel close to..
During this period, José Clemente Orozco dedicated himself to making caricatures for some publications such as The Son of the Ahuizote Y The vanguard. In addition, the Mexican did numerous works in watercolor and lithographs.
In 1916 his first individual exhibition took place entitled The House of Tears, in Biblos bookstore. It was not very successful, since the subject was little understood as it was loaded with squalor and aggressiveness..
In his first exhibition, he presented scenes from the red zone of the Mexican capital and the lives of the women who worked there..
That same year he met who would become, in 1923, his wife, Margarita Valladares. With her Orozco had three children.
After the bad reception he had The House of Tears, José Clemente Orozco decided to go north. He moved to the city of San Francisco in the United States of America, during 1917. Although he also spent some time in New York.
There he only got small jobs and not the desired success. Then, in 1920 he returned to Mexico, two years later he was entrusted with a job at the National High School, since the government sought to enhance the Mexican identity..
Some of the works that Orozco captured in that institution were The Trinity, The Trench, and The Destruction of the Old Order. The revolutionary government collaborated with the resurgence of Mexican muralism since they were the main patrons of its artists.
The three leading exponents in the muralist movement were Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco. However, the latter would always be distanced from his peers by his fascination with horror and suffering as an inspiration in the work of art..
In 1925, Orozco made Omniscience one of its most famous murals, which is located in the Casa de los Azulejos.
Two years later he returned to the United States of America, on that occasion he left his wife and children in Mexico. He was in the country during the Great Depression that is why he lived closely the suffering of the nation due to the economy.
He became friends with Alma Reed, a journalist who opened the doors of American intellectual circles to him and showed the work of the Mexican to his acquaintances.
Then José Clemente Orozco began to make murals in the United States the first was Prometheus (1930), at Pomona College in Claremont, California. He also did other jobs at Dartmouth College like The Epic of American Civilization.
Other spaces such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, or the New School for Social Research in the same city were made with works made by Orozco in this period.
In 1932 he made a tour of Europe, in which he devoted himself to getting to know the art of the Old Continent in depth..
He visited Spain, Italy, England and France. Although he remained for a longer time in the first two, since the character of the English seemed to him little passionate and his main artistic interests were the baroque and the study of chiaroscuro.
I admire the works of Velázquez and Caravaggio. Finally in France he was in charge of knowing the most current trends in art.
In 1934 he returned to his land. At that time, he already had the renown that his years of work in the United States of America gave him, as well as the works he had left in Mexico in the 1920s..
At that time, José Clemente Orozco had achieved artistic maturity by studying the classics and perfecting both his theory and his plastic practice, which had strong conceptual foundations..
The year of his return he made one of his most famous pieces from that period, Catharsis, at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the Mexican capital.
In the city of Guadalajara he left a large part of his legacy from that time. José Clemente Orozco lived there between 1936 and 1939. In those years he did work for the University of Guadalajara, where he painted two murals.
He also decorated the Government Palace with his strokes, because there is his work baptized as Miguel Hidalgo. In addition, in the hospice of the city he made a series of fresco murals.
Later he moved to Mexico City where he did some work, including his frescoes of the Supreme Court of Justice..
During the 1940s, José Clemente Orozco became interested in easel painting. Despite this, he did not abandon muralism entirely. In 1943 he was one of the founding members of the National College of Mexico and, three years later, Orozco received the National Art Prize.
Some of his last works were those of the Sala de la Reforma of the National Museum of History and those of the Chamber of Deputies of Jalisco between 1948 and 1949.
José Clemente Orozco died on September 7, 1949 in Mexico City. His death was caused by a cardiorespiratory arrest.
They watched him at the Palace of Fine Arts and his mortal remains were deposited in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons of the Civil Pantheon of Dolores in the Mexican capital. It was the first time that a painter received this honor in Mexico.
José Clemente Orozco belonged to the current of the revival of the Mexican mural. He was one of its greatest exponents along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
However, Orozco's style was much closer to expressionism and traditional Mexican painting, disregarding the theme of machines that fascinated his contemporaries.
His themes were intimately related to the suffering of the lower classes of his nation, whom he constantly represented in his work..
Normally, Orozco's plastic aesthetic was dark and considered by some to be somewhat grotesque..
Some of the most important works of José Clemente Orozco were:
- Omnisciencia, La Casa de los Azulejos, Mexico City (1925).
- Murals of the National Preparatory School, Mexico City (1926).
- Murals in New School of Social Research, New York (1930).
- Prometheus, Pomona College, Claremont, California (1930).
- Baker Library, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire (1934).
- Catharsis, Palace of Fine Arts, (1934).
- Murals of the Cabañas Cultural Institute, Guadalajara (1935).
- Murals in the Museum of Arts of the University of Guadalajara, Jalisco, (1936).
- Self-portrait (1937).
- Miguel Hidalgo, Government Palace of Jalisco, (1937).
- Murals in the Supreme Court of Justice, Mexico City (1941).
- Hall of the Reform of the National Museum of History (1948).
- Half dome of the Chamber of Deputies of Jalisco (1949).
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