For David Alfaro Siqueiros, art and politics were inseparable.

A Mexican artist and painter, Siqueiros, along with Diego Rivera and Jose Orozco rounded out the “big-three” of the Mexican muralist movement. Officially the Mexican Muralist Renaissance, the movement sought to ditch European standards of art, in favor of incorporating Aztec, Mayan and Olmec artifacts into their murals to promote indigenous culture.

Tony White, Sonoma State professor of Latin American studies, discussed the life and work of Siqueiros at SRJC on Sept. 13. White explained, not a man before his time, Siqueiros was critical to the development of an artistic style that would come to be a trademark of Mexico. However, through the intertwining of his politics and art, Siqueiros was an artist perfectly suited for our time; all he would have to do to his murals is turn factory workers into middle class families and the industrial machine into AIG or Lehman Brothers.

Born Dec. 29, 1896 in Carmago, Mexico, the second of three children of a well-to-do, devout Catholic family, Siqueiros could as easily have joined the priesthood as he became a revolutionary, if not for the death of his mother when he was 4. Sent to live with his grandparents in Mexico City, Siqueiros spent his formative years seeing firsthand the relationship between impoverished laborers and wealthy business owners in Mexico’s industrial system, a theme that would inspire and dominate his later work and political activity.

At 15, Siqueiros participated in a student strike at the Academy of San Carlos. Siqueiros believed that Mexico’s National Academy of Fine Arts, of which the San Carlos Academy was a branch, had become too Euro-centric. The school’s bylaws stated the art director must be a European artist. A movement was beginning in Mexico, with Siqueiros at the forefront, to promote indigenous art through their work, breaking away from the traditionalism of European art toward a culture of Mexico for Mexicans. Three years later, Siqueiros joined the Constitutional Army attempting to overthrow the Huerta government in Mexico’s civil war, White said.

A common criticism of Siqueiros is that his political aspirations often interfered with his artistic talent. Several stints in jail for organizing mining unions and his capacity as a leader in Mexico’s fledgling Communist Party hampered his ability to work as prolifically as his counterpart Diego Rivera. Even his choice of murals was a political decision. As Siqueiros wrote, “Easel painting developed when the private art marker emerged along with the rise of the bourgeoisie…mural painting belongs to the masses, to all humanity.”

Siqueiros completed one of his most famous murals, “Tropical America,” in 1932 at the Italian Hall in Los Angeles. Overlooking a public street, the mural depicts a Native American man being crucified with an eagle, a symbol for American imperialism, sitting atop the cross. Just as his career was taking off, Siqueiros left to fight Franco’s fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War.

Returning to New York in 1936, Siqueiros taught a young Jackson Pollock at an artist workshop, introducing him to the drip method Pollock would later become famous for. Two years later Siqueiros completed another seminal work, “Portrait of the Bourgeoisie.” The mural shows industrial laborers being led by capitalist and fascist factions into a machine, which transforms them into gold coins: the elite gaining their wealth off the backs of the workers. In 1940, Siqueiros’ political life would once again interrupt his art, when he was forced into hiding for the attempted assassination of exiled Soviet leader, Leon Trotsky, who was living in asylum in Mexico.

White summed up Siqueiros’ best with an anecdote about his military uniform during the Spanish Civil War. On a secret mission back to Mexico, Siqueiros stopped off in New York to buy the latest U.S. Army officer’s uniform before returning to Spain. “It was said that he was the best dressed officer in the Spanish Civil War, on either side. There are even accounts that he went into battle wearing a purple robe, or cape,” White said.

When asked why he wore a cape onto the battlefield, Siqueiros said, “What’s the point of being an artist if you can’t design your own uniform.”