International Arte Popular: Mexican, American, and French Muralism 1920‒1940

Abstract

This dissertation tracks the Mexican government’s intentional export of muralism and the subsequent adoption of the movement’s strategies in the United States and France during the 1920s and 1930s. Through an analysis of works created for international expositions and embassies, I uncover the tools the Mexican government utilized to disseminate its culture through mural painting during the inter-war period. In Chapter One, I show that Mexico deliberately commissioned works for diplomatic spaces such as international expositions and embassies beginning in the early 1920s, employing artists to function as diplomats. The United States and France were the two key targets of the Mexican government’s efforts, which contributed to the formation of these two countries’ robust respective mural programs. In Mexico, the defining feature of muralism was its relationship to arte popular, a category of vernacular art that was meant to combine the culture of the middle mestizo (mixed Europeans and Indigenous) classes with that of the lower, Indigenous classes. Similarly, the mark of Mexican muralism in the mural programs of the United States and France, which I address in Chapters Two and Three, respectively, is most clearly observed in the close relationship between these countries’ murals and popular craft (“art populaire” in French). Mural painting in the United States and France was connected to colloquial production that included both traditionally European and traditionally Indigenous or non-Western forms. Together these practices point to a reevaluation of Indigeneity, colonialism, and international relations.