Indigenismo vs Mexican Muralism
インディヘニスモ / メキシコ壁画運動
Indigenismo comes from Avant-garde and Mexican Muralism from Mural Traditions. Both are read here as style. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Indigenismo
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A movement, centred on the Andean countries, that made the bodies, dress and land of indigenous people the subject of the nation. It took local frame and local colour as its standard in place of a European ideal, and spread through painting, printmaking, photography and architectural ornament. It shifted the question of what beauty is measured against.
Mexican Muralism
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Paints post-revolutionary history, labor, indigenous culture and visions of the future onto the vast walls of public buildings.
| Indigenismo | Mexican Muralism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1920s–1950s | 1920s–1940s |
| Family | Avant-garde | Mural Traditions |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | Depiction of indigenous bodies and dress / The colour range of Andean earth and sky / Monumental mass in the figure / Quotation of pre-Columbian ornament | Monumental murals / Crowds of figures / Political narrative / Public space |
| Best used for | National and regional cultural identity for museums, festivals and tourism, where the imagery must come out of the place rather than be applied to it · Portrait direction that treats non-European proportion and dress as the standard rather than the exception | School and civic walls where local history must be read by people passing. · Exhibitions on labor or migration needing crowds of figures to show relationships. |
| Type | A firm, broad-stemmed face whose weight matches the mass of the figure, with pre-Columbian geometry used sparingly as rule and border. | Keep lettering inside banners and flags, painted with the same brush as the image. |
| Composition | A frontal figure occupying most of the height against a high plateau horizon, the ornament confined to the edges. | Set the subject high for an upward view, running the crowd as one wave. |
| Material | Ochre, oxide red and the hard blue of high altitude, on matte surfaces that hold earth tones without gloss. | Fresco on lime plaster with earth pigments, the wall texture left visible. |
| Caution | Painting people as an ideal seen from outside takes their self representation away, and applying pre-Columbian pattern as decoration to an otherwise European image is the very appropriation the movement formed against. | Borrowing crowds and raised fists without deciding whose history is told and for whom yields a large decorative wall with no argument. |