Siqueiros: Landscape Painter

The Museum of Latin American Art (MOLAA) in Long Beach, California, inaugurated the exhibition entitled Siqueiros: Landscape Painter. Curated by Itala Schmelz, it reveals a little-known facet of Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. The exhibition includes 60 paintings, 24 drawings, photographs, books, videos, and even two objects (lighters) decorated with landscape paintings. This group of works contains approximately one half of the 150 landscape paintings that Siqueiros produced between 1930 and 1973, the year of his death. The exhibited works were created with pyroxilin paint over various materials¿including some types of woods¿because Siqueiros rarely used a canvas as a support. His works are characterized for their volume, movement, and depiction of dramatic human themes. According to Schmelz, ¿Siqueiros was a very unique landscape artist. He was not a naturalist; to the contrary, he painted nature to represent humankind. To him, the relationship between human beings and nature was powerful. His landscapes are not represented with objective detachment, but rather reflect the point of view of the person observing them.¿ An active communist, Siqueiros was a fervent advocate of public art. Together with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco, Siqueiros was part of the most famous trio of Mexican muralists. The exhibition also includes a video about his lost paintings and a typed letter that he wrote to Diego Rivera on July 25, 1957, in which he asked Rivera to support the immediate suspension of all thermonuclear atomic testing.