The Orozco Murals

José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) was a leading member of the Mexican muralist public art movement, along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He completed his five socially-themed New School frescoes (a technique of applying pigment onto freshly-prepared plaster) in mid-January 1931, incorporating them into Austrian architect Joseph Urban’s radical and new international style building at 66 West 12^th Street.  Originally, the rooms they currently occupy on the 7^th floor were the public dining room and an adjoining student lounge.  Today, they are the only true surviving example of this fresco form in New York City.

José Clemente Orozco, "Table of Universal Brotherhood", 1930-31, fresco

Orozco proposed to donate the project for only the cost of expenses. The New School for Social Research’s founding president Alvin Johnson wrote, “What could have been my feeling when Orozco, the greatest mural painter of our time, proposed to contribute a mural. All I could say was, ‘God bless you. Paint me the picture. Paint as you must. I assure you freedom.’”

Working with Lois Wilcox, his sole assistant, Orozco had just 47 days to paint the murals due to delays in the building’s construction. Five major works resulted: Science, Labor, and Art (hallway); Homecoming of the Worker of the New Day; Struggle in the Orient; Struggle in the Occident; and Table of Universal Brotherhood (Orozco Room). Each mural in the Orozco Room measures some six feet by thirty feet, interrupted only by architectural details, doors and windows.

José Clemente Orozco, "Struggle in the Orient", 1930-31, fresco

Embracing a larger theme of the “Delphic Circle,” or universal brotherhood, human imagery includes enslaved masses under British imperialism confronted by the figure of Gandhi, the socialist revolution in Mexico and the Marxist revolution in Russia led by Lenin. Central on the rear wall, Table of Brotherhood shows figures of two Asians, an African, a Sikh, a Tartar, a Mexican-Indian, an African-American, an American art critic, a French philosopher, a Zionist and a Dutch poet.

José Clemente Orozco, Homecoming of the Worker of the New Day, 1930-1931, fresco

Dominated by an earthy red palette with shades of gray, black and brown, the works have a 14^th century Giotto-like stylistic severity. Orozco experimented with “dynamic symmetry”, a technique that utilized geometric forms as a strategy for activating the compositional structure.

The murals, debuted at the building’s inauguration, initially met with negative reviews. The public debate that followed (in part due to the inclusion of Lenin and Stalin) drew some 20,000 visitors in the first few months.  In the 1950’s, at the height of the McCarthy era, New School administration elected to cover the portion of the panel depicting Lenin and Stalin with a yellow curtain. After three years, students and faculty protests forced the administration to remove the curtain and restore the murals to their original state.

José Clemente Orozco, "The Struggle in The Occident", 1930-1931, fresco

Orozco’s vision, in its uncompromising intensity and fervent political spirit, has remained intact over the years notwithstanding the changing nature of artistic, political, social and institutional sensibilities.

José Clemente Orozco, "Science, Labor and Art", 1930-31, fresco