Great Art Explained: David Alfaro Siqueiros

Another short for a possible long-form GAE. David Alfaro Siqueiros who was born today in 1896 once wrote: “The artist must paint as he would speak. I don’t want people to speculate what I mean, I want them to understand.” Siqueiros was an outspoken Mexican painter and political activist during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century. He focused on important issues in society, taking up a written, visual, and verbal “call to arms” for art to be created for and about the indigenous people of Mexico. He believed art, especially large murals, had a public purpose and duty to alleviate the problems of his “compadres.” Born in Chihuahua, Mexico, to a bourgeois family, Siqueiros went to Mexico City as a teenager to study art and architecture. The year was 1910, the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. He became immediately involved in student strikes to fight for the rights of Mexican workers and the poor. At age 18, he joined the Mexican Revolutionary Army, and later, the Communist Party. Jailed and exiled from Mexico several times for his radical views and his harsh criticism of the Mexican government, he continued to fit for the rights he believed in for the rest of his life.