Although many have said that Siqueiros' artistic ventures were frequently "interrupted" by political ones, Siqueiros himself believed the two were intricately intertwined. By 1921, when he wrote his manifesto in
Vida Americana, Siqueiros had already been exposed to
Marxism and seen the life of the working and rural poor while traveling with the Constitutional Army. In "A New Direction for the New Generation of American Painters and Sculptors", he called for a "spiritual renewal" to simultaneously bring back the virtues of classical painting while infusing this style with "new values" that acknowledged the "modern machine" and the "contemporary aspects of daily life". The manifesto also claimed that a "constructive spirit" is essential to meaningful art, which rises above mere decoration or false, fantastical themes. Through this style, Siqueiros hoped to create a style that would bridge national and universal art. In his work, as well as his writing, Siqueiros sought a social realism that hailed the proletariat peoples of Mexico and the world, even as it attempted to avoid the widespread clichés of "Primitivism" and "Indianism". In 1922, Siqueiros returned to Mexico City to work as a muralist for
Álvaro Obregón's revolutionary government. The then Secretary of Public Education,
José Vasconcelos, made a mission of educating the masses through public art, and hired scores of artists and writers to build a modern Mexican culture. Siqueiros, Rivera and Orozco worked together under Vasconcelos, who supported the muralist movement by commissioning murals for prominent buildings in Mexico City. Still, the artists working at the Preparatoria realized that many of their early works lacked the "public" nature envisioned in their ideology. In 1923 Siqueiros helped found the Syndicate of Revolutionary Mexican Painters, Sculptors and Engravers, which addressed the problem of public access to art through its paper,
El Machete. That year Siqueiros helped author a manifesto in the newspaper "for the proletariat of the world". It addressed the necessity of "collective" art, which would serve as "ideological propaganda" to educate the masses and overcome bourgeois, individualist art. Soon after, Siqueiros painted his famous mural
Burial of a Worker (1923) in the stairwell of the Colegio Chico. The fresco features a group of pre-Conquest style workers in a funeral procession that are carrying a giant coffin, decorated with a hammer and sickle. The mural was never finished and was vandalized by students at the school who did not agree with the work's overtly political subject matter. Eventually, the entire mural was whitewashed by the new Minister of Education who succeeded Vasconcelos. The Syndicate became ever more critical of the revolutionary government, due to the State's failure to deliver on promised reforms. As a result, its members faced new threats to cut funding for their art and the newspaper. A feud within the Syndicate—regarding a choice between publishing
El Machete or losing financial support for mural projects—led to Siqueiros moving to the forefront of the organization, when Rivera left in protest over the decision to prioritize politics over art. Despite being dismissed from a post at the Department of Education in 1925, Siqueiros remained deeply involved in labor activities, in the Syndicate as well as the Mexican Communist Party, until he was jailed and eventually exiled in the early 1930s. After spending many years in Mexico and being heavily involved in radical political activities, Siqueiros went to Los Angeles, California in 1932 to continue his career as a muralist. Working in a collective unit that experimented with new painting techniques using modern devices such as airbrushes, spray guns and projectors, Siqueiros and his team of collaborators painted two major murals. The first, entitled
Street Meeting, was commissioned for the
Chouinard School of Art. It depicts a group of workers of mixed ethnicities listening to an angry labor agitator's speech during a break in the workday. The mural was washed over within a year of its unveilingdue to weather-related issues, and perhaps the Communist content of the work. Siqueiros' other significant Los Angeles mural,
Tropical America (full name:
América Tropical: Oprimida y Destrozada por los Imperialismos, or
Tropical America: Oppressed and Destroyed by Imperialism), was commissioned shortly after the unveiling of
Street Meeting, and was to be painted on the exterior wall of the Plaza Art Center that faced the busy
Olvera Street.
Tropical America depicts
American imperialism in Latin America, a much more radical theme than was intended for the work. Although it received generally favorable criticism, some viewed it as Communist propaganda, which led to a partial covering in 1934 and a total whitewash in 1938. Eighty years later, the
Getty Conservation Institute performed restoration work on the mural. As no color photographs of
Tropical America are known to exist, conservators used scientific analysis and best practices to get at the artist's vision of the mural. It became accessible to the public on its 80th anniversary, October 9, 2012. The América Tropical Interpretive Center that opened nearby is dedicated to the life and legacy of David Alfaro Siqueiros. ==Artistic career==