[Encyclios]

Mexico

During the same period, only the coherence of the Mexicans Rivera, Siqueiros, Orozco, Tamayo and, to a lesser degree, the Brazilians Portinari and Segali, corresponded to that of the Flemish group. While referring, like the Flemish, to their traditional land, exalting their Indian origins, the Mexicans added a revolutionary and social dimension that led them to be more decorators (large wall frescoes) than easel painters. In their most successful canvases, they equal the lyricism of Permeke (Rivera: the Grinder, 1926: Mexico City, private collection).

The cycles of wall decorations inaugurated by Rivera in 1921 in the National Preparatory School of Mexico City had the merit of bringing monumental painting back into vogue; however, despite the interest of the drawing and the obvious dignity of the themes (struggle of the proletariat, glorification of human labor), too often an emphatic realism prevails over stylistic demands (Rivera: National Agricultural School of Chapingo, 1927; Orozco: University of Guadalajara, 1936).

Tamayo, younger, avoided engaging in a folklore that implied a certain submission to conventional vision; in him the influence of Picasso was liberating (the Singer, 1950: Paris, Musée National d’Art Moderne).

Portinari and Segali developed a similar expressionism in Brazil, where the acute tension of the drawing and the violent stylization of the forms recall Picasso (Portinari: Sepulture in the Hammock, 1944 São Paulo, Museu de arte contemporânea).