Altarpiece of Independence
Juan O'Gorman (1905 to 1982) · 1960 to 1961
Juan O'Gorman called this vast wall an altarpiece, and it works exactly like one: a crowded field of figures that you can read from left to right as the story of the war of Independence between 1810 and 1821. On the left, the aged priest Miguel Hidalgo stands with his banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, calling the people to rise on the night of the sixteenth of September 1810. Around him gather José María Morelos, Ignacio Allende, Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez and dozens of other heroes, each painted as a recognisable portrait, while behind them the towns, churches and battlefields of the war fill the landscape.
O'Gorman was an architect by training, and he painted with a miniaturist's love of detail. Step close and you will find hundreds of tiny incidents: soldiers hanged from trees, insurgents forging cannon, women carrying supplies, and scrolls with slogans and dates lettered in his neat hand. The style is deliberately naive and encyclopedic, closer to a nineteenth century popular print than to the heroic modernism of Rivera or Siqueiros, and that is what gives it its charm. The colours are clear and bright, the sky a deep Mexican blue.
The mural was commissioned for the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of Independence in 1960, and O'Gorman finished it the following year. Nearby, in the neighbouring room, he painted a second and equally packed wall on the Revolution, titled Effective Suffrage, No Re-election. Together they turn the castle into a picture book of Mexican history. Before you move on, find Hidalgo's banner in the painting and remember that the real one hangs elsewhere in this same museum.
Did You Know? O'Gorman built Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo's twin houses in San Ángel and designed the mosaic covered Central Library at the National University before painting this wall.
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