UVA in Mexico: Muralism, Indigeneity & Contemporary Art in Cholula

Campbell, Bruce. Mexican Murals in Times of Crisis. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2003. [English]

• By documenting a range of mural practices—from fixed-site murals to mantas (banner murals) to graffiti—Bruce Campbell evaluates the ways in which the practical and aesthetic components of revolutionary Mexican muralism have been appropriated and redeployed. Four dozen photographs illustrate the text.

Coffey, Mary K. How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals, Museums, and the Mexican State. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012. [English]

• Mary K. Coffey revises traditional accounts of Mexican muralism by describing how a radical art movement was transformed into official culture, ultimately becoming a tool of state propaganda. Analyzing the incorporation of mural art into Mexico's most important public museums, Coffey illuminates the institutionalization of muralism and the political and aesthetic issues it raised. 

Subirats, Eduardo. El Muralismo Mexicano: Mito y Esclarecimiento. Ciudad de México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2018. [Español]

• Through an investigation of Mexican muralism, specifically the work of Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros, Subirats also explores hegemonic American and European interpretations of art.

Breitbart, Eric, and Mary Lance. Diego Rivera: I Paint What I See. Online video. New Deal Films Inc., 1989.

• The first biographical film on the famed Mexican artist, "DIEGO RIVERA: I PAINT WHAT I SEE" traces his life from childhood through his Cubist period, his leading role in the Mexican mural renaissance, his fame as a muralist in the USA, and his later years. 

Siqueiros. Online video. Protele, Inc., 1989.

• José David Alfaro Siqueiros was the Mexican muralist par excellence. Drawing on the pre-Hispanic roots of Mexican culture, he played a leading role in the political revolution of the ’30s.

The Walls of Mexico: Art and Architecture. Online video. Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, 1993.

• This documentary looks at the wall paintings of some of the most famous Mexican muralists--Diego Rivera, Juan O'Gorman, Jose Clemente Orozco--and at the work of Luis Barragan, the most well-known Mexican architect of the 20th century.