Bold and complex, José Clemente Orozco’s iconoclastic personality and dynamic painting made him the conscience of his generation. A film on his life and his art, AMERICAN MASTERS Orozco: Man of Fire, is directed, written and produced by Laurie Coyle and Rick Tejada-Flores. Below, Coyle answers some questions about the film and its fascinating subject:

Q: What do you think is Orozco’s most significant cultural contribution?

A: Ultimately, his most significant cultural contribution is the art he created. Orozco was one of the primary artistic innovators of the 20th century. Along with his fellow Mexican muralists, he revived the fresco tradition. Unlike Italian Renaissance frescoes, which celebrated a unified vision of the world and humanity’s place within it, Orozco’s frescos express a modernist sensibility that questions and deconstructs. He forged an original and remarkable synthesis in modern painting: monumental murals imbued with a critical spirit, a savage irony, a terrible beauty. He consistently pushed the boundaries in his choice of subject matter and never shied away from offending. His expressionist style demonstrated a continual and daring formal and thematic progression. Orozco’s abiding legacy is an ambitious and humane vision of the role of art in society.

Q: How did Orozco overcome such tragedies as the loss of a hand and numerous paintings?

A: Irony is the operative word: the more traumatic the experience, the greater Orozco’s emotional detachment. He described the explosion that cost him his left hand “an ordinary childhood accident.” He called the Mexican Revolution “the gayest and most diverting of carnivals” but his artwork belies his true feelings about its horrors. He made a joke about the incident at the U.S.-Mexico border that destroyed most of his early paintings, writing, “I was led to believe that it was against the law to bring immoral drawings into the United States…or that they already had enough of their own.” Actually, the experience shook him to his core, so much so that he didn’t attempt any new paintings during his first two years in the United States.

Orozco had great tenacity and an unshakeable faith in his mission. He was a master painter, a genius really, and yet he faced tremendous obstacles in his long journey of becoming an artist. He didn’t paint his first mural until he was 40 years old. I don’t think many of us can relate to a one-armed artist painting a hundred feet above the ground, but we can relate to Orozco’s very human struggle to become who he really needed to be – that he achieved and that we can all relate to and admire.

Q: Why did fame come more easily to Rivera than Orozco?

A: The rivalry between Rivera and Orozco was essentially one of personalities. Rivera was an extrovert, the ultimate self-promoter who moved comfortably in all social circles, while Orozco was an introvert with a chip on his shoulder. In the early years, he struggled more for recognition. But by the time of his death, Orozco was considered the pre-eminent muralist of his generation, and archrival Rivera called him “the greatest painter Mexico has produced.” He was embraced by American artists, including 1930s muralists like Thomas Hart Benton and Aaron Douglas, as well abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, and modernists like Isamu Noguchi, Ben Shahn and Jacob Lawrence.

Orozco’s rivalry with Diego Rivera dated from childhood, when both attended Mexico’s premiere fine arts academy. Rivera was the “anointed” student with a scholarship that enabled him to study painting in Paris. Orozco, on the other hand, worked a series of odd jobs during the day to support his family and attended art classes at night. Orozco never studied in Europe and only visited when he was 50 years old and already an established artist.

Q: What drove Orozco to pursue political art and why did he choose murals?

A: Orozco’s life spanned the Mexican Revolution, the Great Depression and the Second World War, and his personality, philosophy and aesthetics were influenced by these cataclysmic events. He believed that the role of art was to bear witness to history, not to illustrate it or celebrate the victors. Orozco sided with the oppressed, but it was not an ideological thing, it came from his life experience and convictions, from his gut. He was skeptical of ideology, but clear in his critique of the destructive potential of the machine, tyranny, militarism and intolerance. In this sense, Orozco takes his place among figures like Francisco Goya, Honoré Daumier, Pablo Picasso, Kathe Kollwitz, and Max Beckmann.

The choice of muralism was essentially one of the historical moment. At the beginning of the 20th century, young Mexican artists were rebelling against academic art. Like the French Impressionists’ Salon des Refusés, they organized an exhibition of independent painting of various modernist tendencies. These artists were also participating in the broader political movements to overthrow the dictatorship of Porfirio Diaz. When the Mexican Revolution broke out, they put their art on hold for a decade. In the ’20s, these artists came together to create public art that would educate Mexico’s illiterate masses and memorialize the sacrifices of the revolution. Orozco didn’t buy into the propaganda goals of the mural movement, but he used the broad canvas of murals to create works that were deeply personal yet universal in their intensity and power. His statement about mural painting says it best: “The highest, the most logical, the purest and strongest form of painting is the mural. It is also the most disinterested form, for it cannot be made a matter of private gain; it cannot be hidden away for the benefit of a certain privileged few. It is for the people. It is for ALL.”

Q: What inspired you to make a film about Orozco?

A: In the 1970s as young art students, we both made pilgrimages to the great murals of Mexico. We were drawn to their vision of a social role for art. More than the others, the murals of José Clemente Orozco drew us back again and again. There was something daring about his compositions, dark in their meanings, risky in their style. His work evoked the sublime El Greco; inhabited the moral universe of Francisco Goya; resonated with its contemporary across the Atlantic, German Expressionism. Orozco bridged a chasm between the socially conscious revolutionary art of the 1930s, the abstract expressionism of the Cold War, and the conceptual formalism of the post-’60s artists.

But Orozco the man was an enigma. On a research trip to Mexico, we scoured bookstores for sources but the results were disheartening: the average art section carried five titles about David Alfaro Siqueiros, 10 on Rivera, and even more about the recently idolized Frida Kahlo (selling a large selection of memorabilia including clay Frida figurines). As for books about Orozco, we usually found none at all. But piecing his life together from out-of-print books, conversations with people who had known him and his own writings, we discovered one of the great, untold stories of modern art, filled with drama, adversity and remarkable achievement.

Q: Tell us about the way you employed graphics in the film.

A: We didn’t want to make a conventional bio-pic about Orozco, so the challenge was to create a documentary style that evoked Orozco’s irony and irreverence, as well as the beauty of his art. We had written these visual sequences that were not naturalistic. We wanted to animate Orozco’s wit, and work with folk art, vintage photos, memorabilia and props. It was very difficult to find the right visual effects artist, because the work samples we saw were so slick. When film producer Sue West introduced us to Robert Conner, we knew he was the one. He brought a lyricism and whimsy to the compositions, and he got Orozco intuitively. We shot some elements in blue screen and collected the rest from archival sources, junk shops and flea markets in Mexico City. Robert constructed the tableaux in Photoshop and After Effects. Whenever he sent us a rough sample, we would throw it up on the office computer, everyone would gather around, and we would laugh in delight and wonder. It was the highlight of the week.

Q: What are some of the central themes Orozco embraced in his art?

A: Orozco once wrote, “I believe in criticism as the most penetrating mission of the spirit, and in its expressive power in art.” He maintained a resolutely critical stance on every theme he tackled, especially the corrupting influence of power and the tyranny of belief systems, whether religious or political. He regarded all orthodoxies or “isms” of the 20th century with equal disdain, his antipathy for ideology matched only by his compassion for common people caught in the great conflagrations of his times. Early in his career, Orozco’s focus was political caricature. He always retained this focus on social satire, although his style evolved into expressionism, and he became what a contemporary called, “the only tragic poet of the Americas.” Especially after his years in the United States, Orozco’s work became increasingly universal and allegorical. He was a humanist concerned with good and evil, with a spiritual quest for meaning, if you can say that about an agnostic.

Q: Did Orozco have conflicted feelings about the Mexican Revolution?

A: Orozco was profoundly suspicious of romanticizing the Mexican Revolution, or any other revolution for that matter. In this regard, he differed from his more overtly political colleagues Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The loss of his hand through an accident saved him from forced conscription in the warring armies of the revolution. During those years he worked as a political cartoonist, creating biting and satirical images for a series of opposition newspapers. But he was unwilling to cross the line to exhort anyone to kill or be killed for abstract ideas, which seemed to him to mask the baser motives of greed and the pursuit of power. In the years that followed, he produced a series, Mexico in Revolution, that ranks with Goya’s Disasters as one of our most powerful testimonies to the tragedy of war.

Q: Is the art of social realism being practiced today and, if so, are the artists at all indebted to Orozco?

A: Social realism isn’t really a style, but refers to a tendency in art to explore social conditions, to use art as a weapon in struggles against injustice. It’s often confused with “socialist realism” and Soviet-inspired art after the Russian Revolution. Social realism had its big moment in U.S. art between the World Wars, and again in the ’60s. Both eras had a strong focus on mural painting because of its public nature. It incorporates a very broad range of genres and styles, which can easily be seen in the art created under the WPA programs during the Depression. The Mexican Mural Renaissance was never a stylistic movement like Cubism or Fauvism. It incorporated everything from Diego Rivera’s neoclassical epic style, to David Alfaro Siqueiros’ structural dynamism and Orozco’s expressionism.

When the U.S. community mural movement began in the ’60s, Orozco was over-shadowed by Rivera and Siqueiros. Rivera’s bold and sensual forms, and Siqueiros’ iconic revolutionary images better suited the spirit of Chicano pride and protest. Orozco’s style was enigmatic and inimitable – and he wasn’t married to Frida Kahlo! He had a subtler but equally important influence that can be described as both a moral influence and one of gesture. Orozco represented the artist as solitary individual who offers a unique and powerful response to his times. His artwork never goes out of style.

Q: Why is Orozco an American Master?

A: In the first place, it’s important to point out that most people living in the continents north and south call themselves “Americans” and don’t embrace the notion that “America” refers to the United States. So from that point of view, of course Orozco is an American Master.

Beyond geo-politics and national identity, Orozco spent 10 years in the United States, where he painted four major murals as well as hundreds of easel paintings and graphic works. He challenged stereotypes of Mexican art as folkloric, exotic and social realist, and became a vital member of the New York art scene. During his years in the U.S., Orozco faced episodes of censorship, but transcended cultural and language barriers to become a pioneer of the public arts movement of the 1930s-40s. His expressionist style influenced successive generations of American artists – the young Jackson Pollock kept a photograph of Orozco’s Prometheus mural in his studio, and declared it to be “the greatest painting in North America.” Philip Guston, Reuben Kadish and Charles White traveled to Mexico to watch him paint. Ben Shahn, Hale Woodruff, Jacob Lawrence, and Isamu Noguchi absorbed stylistic influences, as did the generation of Chicano and African-American muralists who reinvented public art in their communities in the 1960s-1970s. Today, his legacy inspires contemporary conceptual artists on both sides of the border.

1883
José Clemente Orozco is born on November 23 in Zapotlan el Grande, Mexico, to Ireneo Orozco, a businessman, and Maria Rosa, a homemaker and amateur singer. A few years later, the family moves to Mexico City, where he takes night classes at the famed San Carlos Academy of Art.

1898
Parents send him to the countryside to become an agricultural engineer. Contracts rheumatic fever and returns home with a heart condition. Studies architecture at the National Preparatory School.

1903
Father dies suddenly of typhus. Orozco quits school and begins a series of odd jobs to support his mother and two siblings. Works as an architectural draftsman, as well as hand-tinting postmortem portraits.

1904
Mixing chemicals to make fireworks to sell on Mexican Independence Day, Orozco accidentally sets off an explosion. His left hand and eye are injured, but due to the holiday, he is not attended at a hospital for a few days. Gangrene sets in and his hand and wrist must be amputated to save his life.

1910
Mexico celebrates 100 years of independence from Spain with lavish festivities, including an official exhibition of Spanish art. The irony is not lost on young Mexican artists, who set up a counter exhibition like the French Salon des Refusés years earlier. It is an unexpected success with the public.

1911
Constitutionalists force dictator Porfirio Diaz out of office. Francisco Madero is elected president, but Victoriano Huerta stages a coup and murders him. A bloody struggle amongst political factions will last for a decade. Due to his disability, Orozco escapes conscription and works as a caricaturist for various opposition newspapers.

1916
First solo exhibition opens, “The House of Tears,” featuring paintings of Mexico City’s red light district. Most critics ignore or attack the exhibit.

1917-19
Travels to the U.S. in search of better opportunities. At the Texas border, customs officials destroy two thirds of his early work because of their “immoral” character. He lives in San Francisco and New York City and makes a living painting cinema posters and plastic Kewpie dolls.

1923
Mexico’s new revolutionary government begins an ambitious literacy campaign that includes mural painting in public buildings. Hired to paint walls at the National Preparatory School, but is forced out after students deface his murals. Later completes the 3-story mural cycle to wide acclaim.

1927
Leaves his wife and children and returns to New York City where he witnesses the “Crash” of 1929. Paints the economic and social devastation of the Great Depression. American journalist Alma Reed becomes his agent and Orozco exhibits widely.

1930
Commissioned by Pomona College in Claremont, California to paint a mural in the student cafeteria. Paints Prometheus, the first true fresco ever painted in the U.S. The following year, paints murals at the New School for Social Research.

1932-34
Hired by Dartmouth College in New Hampshire to paint murals in the campus library. Joined by his wife and three children. Creates the 24-panel The Epic of American Civilization, which evokes controversy and praise. David Alfaro Siqueiros’ mural in Los Angeles and Diego Rivera’s mural at Rockefeller Center are both destroyed by offended patrons.

1934-39
President Roosevelt establishes the WPA’s Federal Arts Projects, which hires artists to paint murals in hundreds of government buildings throughout the United States. Returns to Mexico and paints his best-known works, including murals in Guadalajara’s government palace and university and the Hospicio Cabañas. Known as the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas,” the Hospicio features Orozco’s magnum opus, the Man of Fire.

1940
Commissioned by New York City’s Museum of Modern Art to create the centerpiece for its exhibition Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art. Paints Dive Bomber and Tank, an indictment of the impending conflagration of WWII. Paints murals in the library of Jiquilpan, Mexico.

1941
Paints a daring critique of the judicial system at Mexico’s Supreme Court. Time magazine reports the outcry demanding their removal, but the murals are protected. Paintings and prints are exhibited in museums throughout the United States, including Brooklyn and Philadelphia.

1943
Meets and falls in love with Gloria Campobello, the prima ballerina of the Mexico City Ballet and designs sets, costumes and posters for the ballet. Elected as fellow to the Colegio de Mexico, an elite circle of intellectuals and artists.

1944
Listed in Who’s Who in America and begins painting The Apocalypse in Mexico City’s Church of Jesus of Nazareth. It is his most complex mural.

1946
Leaves his family and lives in New York City with Gloria Campobello. Exhibits and is reviewed in the national press, but creates few paintings. After Gloria abandons him, returns to Mexico.

1947
Illustrates John Steinbeck’s The Pearl, judges an art contest with Walt Disney, and works with UNESCO. Mexico honors him with a major retrospective.

1948
Paints his only outdoor mural, Allegory of the Nation, at Mexico’s National Teachers College, featured in Life magazine. He creates Metaphysical Landscape and other abstract works.

1949
Completes mural at Guadalajara’s Legislators Assembly. While painting a public housing mural, he dies of heart failure at the age of 65.

Art is knowledge at the service of emotion.
-José Clemente Orozco

The life of Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949), a life filled with drama, adversity, and triumph, is one of the great stories of the modern era. Despite poverty, childhood rheumatic fever that damaged his heart and an explosion in his youth that cost him his left hand, Orozco persisted in his wish to become an artist. He experienced the carnage and duplicity of the Mexican Revolution, the hardship following the New York stock market crash in 1929, and rising fascism in Europe during his only trip there in 1932, and emerged with an aesthetic and moral vision unparalleled in twentieth century painting.

A taciturn individualist, highly sensitive and utterly inept at self-promotion, Orozco had a sharp tongue and mordant sense of humor. Described by a contemporary as “the only tragic poet America has produced,” Orozco was first and foremost a public artist whose greatest achievements were the murals he created not for individual patrons, but for the whole of society. Yet, in comparison with his colleague and rival Diego Rivera, until recently the name of this pre-eminent public artist was little known to the public. Orozco’s work was marginalized as complex and controversial, while Orozco the man has been considered as something of an enigma. Who was this solitary figure who spent years alone on scaffolds creating works that challenge both social norms and the art establishment?

Born in Zapotlan el Grande to a middle-class family that fell on hard times, Orozco was shaped at the outset of his career by the experience of ten years of civil war that gripped Mexico during the second decade of this century. He was twenty-seven when the Revolution began, thirty-four when he left Mexico for the United States for the first time in 1917. Some measure of the brutality he witnessed during those years is conveyed in his autobiography:

People grew used to killing, to the most pitiless egotism, to the glutting of the sensibilities, to naked bestiality. … In the world of politics it was the same, war without quarter, struggle for power and wealth. … Underneath it all, subterranean intrigues went on among the friends of today and the enemies of tomorrow, resolved, when the time came, upon mutual extermination.

Haunted by the savagery and treachery of this period, Orozco’s idealism took a resolutely apolitical form. He saw concepts of race and nationality and dogmas of political and religious salvation as idols that corrupt understanding and prevent the emancipation of the human spirit. Only by throwing off the shackles of creeds and prejudices that have enslaved humankind to authoritarian purposes, he believed, can genuine harmony of individual expression and social purpose come into being.

Under-appreciated as an artist in his native Mexico until late in his career, Orozco spent a total of ten years in the United States. He created four major murals here (at Pomona College, the New School for Social Research, Dartmouth College, and the Museum of Modern Art), along with hundreds of easel paintings and graphic works that challenged U.S. stereotypes of Mexican art. Despite episodes of censorship and periods of financial deprivation, Orozco became a pioneer of the public arts movement of the 1930s and 40s. Isamu Noguchi, Ben Shahn, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, and Jacob Lawrence were among the American artists influenced by his expressionist style. In the 1960s and 70s, Orozco’s work helped inspire a new generation of Chicano and African American muralists to reinvent public art within their communities. His legacy continues today among contemporary artists on both sides of the border.

Orozco created major frescoes in Mexico after his return there in 1934, including the magnificent cycle with which he covered the interior walls of the Hospicio Cabañas in Guadalajara in 1939. The immense nave, encompassing a series of arched panels and semi-circular ceiling vaults, provided a dramatic space for Orozco to explore the interplay of indigenous and European forces within modern-day Mexico. At the center of the nave, sixty meters above the floor, his majestic Man of Fire ascends into the cupola of what has become known as the “Sistine Chapel of the Americas.”

The last time Orozco returned to the U.S. was in 1945. In the throes of midlife crisis at the relatively late age of 62, he told a friend, “I need to do it to renew myself.” But the much-anticipated creative renewal did not materialize, and after months of struggle and soul searching, Orozco returned home. In his final years, Orozco continued to climb the scaffolding, although his damaged heart forced him to stop and catch his breath every few steps. He completed his last fresco less than a month before he died in his sleep of heart failure at the age of 65.

A key to understanding Orozco’s work is an awareness of the relation between the artist’s passionate idealism and his pessimism. Spain’s greatest filmmaker, the late Luis Buñuel, declared that “man is never free, yet he fights for what he can never be, and that is tragic.” Orozco’s sense of the human condition was based on a similar conviction of tragic impasse. “To have a tragic vision in the Americas is extremely difficult,” says Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, “because we were founded as the Brave New World of happiness, the great utopia. So when a writer like Faulkner breaks through the optimism of the United States, or a painter like Orozco breaks through the promise of Mexico of the New World, it is a very striking event.” Through his art Orozco shared his trauma and his anger, which he insisted over and over, in many forms, is our trauma and should be our anger. “Painting,” Orozco believed, “assails the mind. It persuades the heart.”

–Jacquelynn Baas

For more information, and to download a study guide, visit the filmmaker’s Web site.