Jose Clemente Orozco

Mexican, 1883 -1949

BiographyJosé Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), nicknamed “the printmaker for the people” was born in Zapotlán el Grande, Mexico, and spent most of his career living and working in Mexico City, New York City, and Guadalajara. After initially studying agriculture and architecture, he enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts of San Carlos in 1907 to study painting. Orozco’s work as an editorial illustrator for various newspapers during the Mexican Revolution (1910-20) as well as the prints of José Guadalupe Posada (1851-1913), the expressive symbolism of his former art teachers, and horrors of the Mexican Revolution informed his subsequent approach to printmaking as a means to engage a wide audience for political and social reform. In 1923, Orozco received his first public mural commission for the National Preparatory School as part of an effort to build a new national identity after the revolution. This was followed by major mural projects across Mexico and the United States including at Pomona College in California (1930), The New School for Social Research, New York City (1930-31), Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (1932-34), and the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara (1936-39), among other locations.

Orozco was one of the great proponents of the Mexican Mural Renaissance who- along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueirosestablished a modern fresco tradition in Mexico and the United States. As the most dedicated printmaker of the three, he contributed to the renaissance in Mexican printmaking, creating thirty lithographs and twenty intaglios during his career. His works on paper can be found in many major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City.

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