In the 1920s the postrevolution Minister of Education, José Vasconcelos, commissioned talented young artists – among them Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros and José Clemente Orozco – to decorate numerous public buildings with dramatic, large-scale murals conveying a new sense of Mexico’s past and future.
Secretaría de Educación Pública is housed in one such building, a former monastery. The two front courtyards (on the opposite side of the building from the entrance off Plaza Santo Domingo) are lined with 120 fresco panels painted by Diego Rivera in the 1920s. Together they form a tableau of ‘the very life of the people,’ in the artist’s words. Each courtyard is thematically distinct: the one on the east end deals with labor, industry and agriculture, while the interior one depicts traditions and festivals. On the latter’s top level is a series on proletarian and agrarian revolution, underneath a continuous red banner emblazoned with a Mexican corrido (folk song). The likeness of Frida Kahlo appears in the first panel as an arsenal worker.
A block back toward the Zócalo, then east, is the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso . Built in the 16th century as a Jesuit college, it later became a prestigious teacher-training institute. In the 1920s, Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and others were brought in to do murals. Most of the work on the main patio is by Orozco; look for his portrait of Cortés and La Malinche underneath the staircase. The amphitheater, off the lobby, holds Rivera’s first mural, La creación, undertaken upon his return from Europe in 1923. Mural tours (in Spanish) are given at noon and 4:30pm. Nowadays, the San Ildefonso hosts outstanding temporary exhibitions.
More Orozco murals are inside the Suprema Corte de Justicia , south of the Zócalo. In 1940 the artist painted four panels around the first level of the central stairway, two of which deal with the theme of justice. A more contemporary take on the same subject, Los siete crímenes mayores (The Seven Worst Crimes), by Rafael Cauduro, unfolds over the three levels of the building’s southwest stairwell. Executed in his hyper-realist style, the series catalogs the horrors of state-sponsored crimes against the populace, including the ever-relevant torture-induced confession. On the southeast corner of the building’s interior, Ángel Ismael Ramos Huitrón’s En búsqueda de la justicia (In Search of Justice) reflects on the Mexican people’s constant struggle to obtain justice, as does the social-realism work La justicia (Justice), by Japanese-Mexican artist Luis Nishizawa, on the northwest stairwell. At the northeast end, Leopoldo Flores Valdes’ Todo movimento social es justicia (All Social Movements Are Just) depicts scenes involving freedom fighters such as Miguel Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata. Free audio guides in English are available at the entrance.
The Mercado Abelardo Rodríguez , northeast of the Zócalo, became a canvas for a group of young international artists under the tutelage of Diego Rivera in the 1930s. Some of the most exuberant works, created by the American Greenwood sisters, cover the stairwell leading up to the community center, at the market’s northeast corner. On the 1st floor, Historia de México, by Japanese artist Isama Noguchi, is a dynamic three-dimensional mural sculpted of cement and plaster that symbolizes the struggle against fascism. Other murals inside the market’s entry corridors are paeans to rural laborers and their traditions, though some are fading from neglect.
A block south, the Templo de Nuestra Señora de Loreto has a remarkable dome. Ringed at the base by stained-glass images, the dome crowns an unusual four-lobed cross with semicircular chapels in the lobes. After the 1985 earthquake the building was raided of its treasures, and the murals that covered the underside of the cupola were allowed to deteriorate.
