A new home for Siqueiros mural - Front Page - David Alfaro Siqueiros, Santa Barbara Museum of Art

Art in America, Nov, 2002 by David Ebony

The only intact mural in the U.S. by Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros was unveiled on Oct. 20 in its new home at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. The 32-foot-long, 8-foot-high casein and oil-on-cement work, Portrait of Mexico Today, was painted in 1932 on a wall in the Pacific Palisades home of film director Dudley Murphy. Siqueiros, who died in 1974, met Murphy through their mutual friend, the Russian director Sergei Eisenstein. Murphy invited Siqueiros to hold an exhibition of his easel paintings in his home, introducing his work to prominent members of the filmmaking community. As a gesture of gratitude, the artist offered to paint the mural on a semi-enclosed wall in Murphy's garden. Until now, the work had remained in private hands and was generally well maintained.

In 1999, the most recent owners of the property, who wish to remain anonymous, donated the work to the museum. Soon after, a team of conservators, funded by two anonymous benefactors, prepared the work for transport to Santa Barbara. Late last year, the mural (with its entire support structure) was moved to the museum, where it will remain on permanent display.

Divided in three parts, the composition shows, in the center panel, a standing child flanked by two Mexican peasant women in traditional dress, who are seated on the steps of an Aztec pyramid. The unpopulated right panel shows another detail of the pyramid, while the left panel is occupied by a portrait of an armed, seated soldier in peasant garb; he is Plutarco Elias Calles, who was a military leader during the revolutionary period, 1910-40, and served as president of Mexico, 1924-28. The moneybags at his feet and a portrait of J.P. Morgan on a side panel refer to a conflict between the U.S. and Mexico in the early '30s that centered on a dispute over Mexican oil rights and the claims of U.S. bankers.

Siqueiros created two other murals in the U.S., all painted in 1932 in the Los Angeles area. Street Meeting, commissioned by the Chouinard School of Art (now CalArts), was destroyed. Severely damaged and whitewashed, Tropical America, a mural for Olvera Street, which is still in situ, is currently the focus of a $3-million restoration effort by the Getty Conservation Institute [see "Front Page," May '98].