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A sketch can be many things: a promise, the key to the means to an end, an experiment, or as in the case of the Seize All The Walls exhibition, a sketch is a work of art as such. From May 4 to August 27, the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City opens its rooms to receive an exhibition of more than 180 sketches by the master José Clemente Orozco; on the second floor of the INBAL compound.
As a prelude to the 140th anniversary of the birth of the great Jalisco muralist in 2023, the Federal Ministry of Culture, the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature (Inbal), and the Cabañas Cultural Institute, through the Museum of the Palace of Fine Arts open the rooms Tamayo, Orozco, Camarena, and Siqueiros to present the exhibition Seize All The walls, Drafts by José Clemente Orozco. In addition, the collection also marks the culmination of the centennial celebration of the muralist movement.
The exhibition invites you to delve into the creative processes of the prolific muralist career of Maestro José Clemente Orozco in a didactic way to learn about the work behind thirteen murals by Maestro Clemente Orozco in chronological order. These represent approximately 90% of the muralist production of the great Mexican artist.
The tour begins with a photomural from the documentary collection of Dartmouth College, the place where the teacher made one of his most impressive and complex murals in 1932. In addition to the historical value of said photograph, it allows us to understand many of the productive and creative processes around the murals. In it, you can see the first pencil lines on the wall to fragment it into tasks. In these, Orozco began to paint in different places in the Baker Library and not in sequential order. In addition, in said image, we can appreciate the work done by his assistants in color tests and the teacher painting on the scaffolding. Each photomural shows a text describing the social context and the scene during its creation process.
The exhibition shares over 180 pieces created from 1923 to 1947, presented together after 40 years. Despite being sketches, we can find different techniques and several formats.
Thanks to its free, open, and experimental nature, the sketch has been fundamental to materializing the ideas behind various artistic, architectural, and scientific manifestations throughout history. In the case of Orozco, a virtuoso draftsman from an early age, it is possible to appreciate how his preliminary projects respond to compositional, anatomical, and gestural interests in a constant dialogue with the architectural spaces in which he made his murals. In his studies, several mathematical and scaling calculations, elements related to perceptual factors, and light, chromatic, and linear intensities are pondered. They contain multiple layers of information that allow us to understand his sensory, discursive, narrative, and emotional intentions.
The curious name of the exhibition is Seize All the Walls. José Clemente Orozco’s Preliminary Projects arise from the teacher’s response to the question, What are you doing now? After having made the prestigious mural of the University of Guadalajara. And for its part, Preliminary Projects was a term commonly used by the artist to relate his works directly to architectural aspects.
Seize All The Walls, José Clemente Orozco’s Preliminary Projects will be open to the public from May 4 to August 27, as well as a series of parallel activities, such as conferences, workshops, and talks.
See more information at the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes.
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Statement, Alan González S.
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