Page 58 - Studio International - January 1965

The cell paintings of Siqueiros

by Irene Nicholson

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Tree with figures
2
Women ,n front of mountams

3
Figures in front of a mountam
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One of S1que1ros·s 1a1I tree
paintings with very small figures

1 2

The Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros was Then. and in less didactic. more moving terms. he
jailed in 1960 on charges of disturbing public order. described how he had had to work in his cell by
carrying arms. and aiding and abetting public demon­ artificial light. He had been separated from his usual
strations. He was later convicted and given a long themes and had to paint from memory. Frequently he
sentence but was pardoned and released last July. For did landscapes from memory. or trees and flowers. As
nearly four years he lived in a confined space and had he worked. he learned that easel painting is another
to paint in a cell measuring 6 ft. by 13 ft.. lighted by a thing from muralism (later he compared murals with
single window measuring roughly two feet square. the cinema. easel painting with still photography). He
Only a few days after his release he opened the room had moved. he said. from flowers to abstractions of a
in Chapultepec Castle where he had been painting a sort. though he insisted that man has never ceased to
mural. and in front of his unfinished work he lectured be the centre of his creations. He improved his colour.
passionately to a crowd of students. At the right hand his texture. his synthesis. Now that he is free again the
of the mural a pattern of top-hatted gentry and women problem. he told the students. is how to return to a
with generous cleavage emphasized the 'class struggle' different form of art. to a different profession. In jail he
with which Siqueiros has so insistently occupied him­ had missed what he called the 'optical mobility· of the
self; in the central and largest panel the same triangular mural. Now he must learn to go back to it. He thought
pattern. pressing forward into the room. makes use of he had found easel painting more ·accidental', whereas
the straw sombreros of the peasant armies and the mural painting was a ·sermon· and must have a theme;
rebozos or head shawls of their women; and in the fore­ it was a pulpit or a tribune. Painting murals. one had to
ground a dead man is being carried on the shoulders of analyse more and be more logical.
the people. his legs foreshortened to give impact. The All this Siqueiros passionately said; and then a few
left-hand panel is at present an unfinisrreet mass with weeks later an exhibition of his jail paintings was
the same triangular motif. mounted together with some earlier works. so that
Standing in front of this wall. as if the better to people could see for themselves what kind of effect
emphasize the deprivation he had suffered in having to four years of confinement had had on his work.
work for nearly four years at small easel paintings. The first impression was that there had been a very big
Siqueiros spoke of the desire of ordinary people to break. from harsh polemic to gentle abstraction. This.
be set at ease when they look at paintings. of their dis­ however. is to speak in crude terms. While in jail he
taste for a work that disturbs them. 'A painting can be continued to paint allegories in which good workers
abstract.· said Siqueiros. 'but it must say something.· and evil capitalists were still at odds; conversely there
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