Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:08in Paris in Rivera's
00:00:11apartment on Rue de C. So,
00:00:14there comes Siqueiros, the young revolutionary who had been a
00:00:18soldier, and he meets this artist who was Diego Rivera
00:00:22back then, not an artist who had gone through
00:00:25Cubism, who had painted in the style of Red
00:00:29Noardes. They say he knew modernism forwards
00:00:33and backwards, inside out, but had not
00:00:36been in the revolution, had not been a
00:00:40vigor, the energy, everything that soldier, and with Diego, he also
00:00:43connects with the Spanish anarchists. It's curious, because
00:00:47later he fought in the Spanish Civil War, he was one of the
00:00:51opponents of the
00:00:53anarchists. Gachita
00:00:57decided that the name Pepe Alfaro
00:01:00didn't fit that great orator with curly
00:01:03hair who deliberately
00:01:06messed it up when he spoke at
00:01:09a rally, and he decided that this
00:01:12curly hair, similar to Michelangelo's David,
00:01:15warranted the name David. From
00:01:20Siqueiros and Angélica hide in that moment on, he stopped being Pepe
00:01:22Alfaro.
00:01:30of San Romano by Uccello, it's a work from 1480 that
00:01:33evidently had a great, great, great
00:01:37influence, not only on Siqueiros but also on Rivera.
00:01:40Yes, the composition of muralism is
00:01:43inconceivable without the
00:01:47plastic structure that Uccello presents in 1480.
00:01:51conflicts even with the It speaks of the possibility of illusionistic painting, of
00:01:54the figure seeming to come out of the
00:01:57painting. Diego, for example, never
00:02:00sympathized with the
00:02:02to take painting out anarchists. And the first group Siqueiros joined in Spain
00:02:06was the anarchists. So much so that when he published the
00:02:10only issue of the magazine Vida Americana,
00:02:14sea, the basis of what he published certain ideologies that Diego did not
00:02:17share, and he only signed one article. He did not want to be
00:02:21responsible for co-directing the
00:02:24magazine.
00:02:27One of his first manifestos is the three
00:02:30calls to young Latin American
00:02:33artists, and in that manifesto, he
00:02:37tells them: let's recover the great constructive
00:02:42painters, supporters of structure of our
00:02:43The director of pre-Columbian world, of the ancient world, of the world
00:02:46before the Spanish, but let's not imitate their
00:02:50forms.
00:02:58With Vasconcelos's invitation,
00:03:01So, he already deeply involved in the need to
00:03:03give Mexico a national
00:03:06identity through the muralism project,
00:03:10he opens the doors of the old
00:03:13San Ildefonso school, of the old Jesuit school. Well, that's where
00:03:17the first mural experiences take place.
00:03:20It's curious, the first thing I really
00:03:24started to paint in my
00:03:26adult artist life was a
00:03:30mural, which was the mural of the National Preparatory School.
00:03:33It's there that our great movement begins,
00:03:37when José Clemente Orozco, Diego
00:03:40Rivera, Fernando Leal,
00:03:42Revueltas, Charlotte, and the others painted simultaneously.
00:03:46Siqueiros finally discovers the value of photographic
00:03:50testimony and culminates his work at the
00:03:53preparatory school, which remains unfinished with the burial of the
00:03:57worker, which is a
00:04:00work with very synthetic forms, where
00:04:04for the first time he begins to compose
00:04:07space with the pathetic figures
00:04:10of this terrible political
00:04:14situation.
00:04:19The machete serves to cut sugarcane, to open paths
00:04:22in shady forests, to decapitate snakes,
00:04:25to cut all weeds and to humble the pride of the impious
00:04:29rich.
00:04:33The only existing copy of the original machete, I
00:04:36was the one who brought it to Tres Picos to
00:04:40be able to copy the parts from Siqueiros and from Cachita
00:04:44Amador. In Mexico, there is only one
00:04:46copy.
00:04:49The machete, the leadership team of it,
00:04:53In a private house, he performs the that is, Rivera, Javier Guerrero, and Siqueiros
00:04:56go straight to the central committee of the communist party.
00:05:00This Mexican, Siqueiros was more interested in
00:05:03politics and he goes to Jalisco to lead the
00:05:07dark figure behind miners, simple and plain. Since he
00:05:10doesn't see a favorable field in Mexico, after
00:05:14painting The Burial of the Worker, he
00:05:18goes to Jalisco and in Jalisco
00:05:21he helps his friend paint what is today the
00:05:24Octavio Paz library in Guadalajara. They paint
00:05:28four- handed.
00:05:31Siqueiros says, if painting is not going to be
00:05:34valued in the Calles government, yes,
00:05:38I will retire from painting. The Soviet Union, he travels in
00:05:421928 at a meeting of political
00:05:46and trade union delegates, not as an artist.
00:05:59In 1929, as general secretary of the Unitary
00:06:03Trade Union Confederation, Siqueiros travels to Montevideo, Uruguay, the
00:06:06homeland of his friend Joaquín Torres García, to participate in the
00:06:10Latin American Trade Union Congress.
00:06:14If there's one thing that is conclusive, definitive in Siqueiros's
00:06:18life, young Siqueiros, it's his relationship with Blanca
00:06:21Luz Brum. He was absolutely
00:06:24smitten. It was love on both sides. He forgot to
00:06:28tell her he was married. She forgot to tell him she had a
00:06:32child, that her husband had already died, and that she had lived in three countries.
00:06:36These are small oversights that occur. Love is worth
00:06:39everything.
00:06:42It transformed him in many ways, it didn't make him lose his
00:06:46militancy, it didn't make him lose his
00:06:49capacity as a creator, as a
00:06:52universal-scale creator, but it
00:06:55did put many things in crisis and
00:06:58those were tremendously intense years that generated
00:07:03Mexican Communist Party, and he
00:07:06preferred her over the
00:07:09party.
00:07:19Siqueiros arrives on the Yucatán Peninsula accompanied by Blanca Luz and her son
00:07:23Eduardito.
00:07:27They take the opportunity to visit in a nearby town near Mérida, the Nicaraguan
00:07:30Augusto César Sandino, the general of Free
00:07:33Men.
00:07:41On March 27, the day they arrive in Mexico City, Siqueiros's
00:07:44political career suffers a significant setback when he is expelled
00:07:48from the Mexican Communist Party for indiscipline. On
00:07:51April 30, he is arrested and imprisoned for 6 months in
00:07:55Lecumberri, accused by the government of conspiring against President Pascual
00:07:59Ortiz
00:07:59Rubio.
00:08:04She is the one who assists him in his
00:08:07prison in 1929-30.
00:08:13spends six months in prison, and Blanca Luz Brum goes to
00:08:17a sculptor's house because she had no money even
00:08:20for the humblest pension, and
00:08:24that's seen in the series of letters that were published by
00:08:28a French publisher, "Penitentiary Niño Perdido" which was
00:08:32the name of the bus she took to visit
00:08:34Siqueiros in Lecumberri.
00:08:38Prisoner." Siqueiros is obsessed with
00:08:41how painting can
00:08:44expand the space of confinement. So
00:08:48that's where Siqueiros begins to
00:08:51use this way of expanding, of
00:08:54challenging the space of architecture in tiny
00:08:57paintings.
00:09:05Art is the new trench, engrave, paint,
00:09:08photograph, relate to cinema. All this inspires Siqueiros
00:09:12during his 15 months of judicial confinement in the city of Tasco with Blanca
00:09:16Luz.
00:09:19And in Tasco he makes some truly extraordinary
00:09:23nudes of Blanca Luz Brum
00:09:26because they are not
00:09:29frivolous or easy
00:09:33nudes, but almost with
00:09:36that hieratic quality of pre-Hispanic art, without resembling pre-Hispanic
00:09:40art. But he also makes
00:09:43important compositions like
00:09:47peasant mother, worker mother,
00:09:51with very rudimentary materials, he manages to
00:09:54apply that importance he gives to photographic testimony
00:09:58with an extraordinary painting, which is "The Accident in the Mine." He
00:10:01paints on sacking with pigments and
00:10:05very common paint, and these are truly
00:10:08sensational paintings, that stage in Tasco.
00:10:13It is a very important stage for his painting, and he
00:10:16forgets that he has
00:10:20the obligation not to enter Mexico City, because
00:10:24he cared little and came to give a conference about
00:10:28all his experiences in Tasco, which were very
00:10:31rich. He talks about the composition of new
00:10:35materials.
00:10:38Siqueiros deepened his relationship with cinema,
00:10:42which he had already started in Mexico
00:10:45when Eisenstein was
00:10:48filming ¡Que viva
00:10:50México!
00:10:55Eisenstein captures the psychology of the
00:10:58character. He writes text taking into
00:11:01account, so to speak, the
00:11:05Siqueiros was, that kind of
00:11:08dynamite, as they call him in
00:11:10Mexico.
00:11:14The exhibition of Trasco's work at the Spanish Casino
00:11:17is doubly spectacular, because
00:11:21it broke the restriction in the city of Tasco, but... more
00:11:25for the enormous quality of the work he
00:11:27presents.
00:11:30The exhibition at the Spanish Casino in Mexico City displays 60
00:11:34oil paintings, woodcuts, lithographs, and
00:11:37drawings. He closed it with a conference
00:11:40titled "Reflections on Plastic Arts in
00:11:43Mexico." With this violation of the ban and other
00:11:47political participations by Siqueiros, the government exiles him to the United
00:11:51States.
00:11:55The world of great museums, of
00:11:58important art schools, of
00:12:01research centers, that was what attracted him.
00:12:05So, with Blanca Luz Brum, they go to Los
00:12:08Angeles and end up in the
00:12:12boarding house of Mrs. Electa
00:12:15Arenal Bastard, who was Angélica's
00:12:18mother.
00:12:20In
00:12:251932, when David Alfaro Siqueiros arrived in Los
00:12:28Angeles, his first project was to paint a
00:12:31mural on a wall of the
00:12:35Shenard school, an art school,
00:12:38and he organized a group
00:12:41of mural artists of that time
00:12:45called the Fresco Block Painters. The mural was
00:12:49called "Workers'
00:12:50Meeting."
00:12:55He paints a worker
00:12:58preaching to the poor
00:13:01people so they would have a
00:13:05revolutionary attitude.
00:13:08Shiinart, who was a reactionary, quickly
00:13:11ordered it to be covered up.
00:13:15In Los Angeles, he experimented with making street murals not
00:13:19with lime and sand but with cement, which was the first
00:13:22time in history that was done. That is, it wasn't just about arriving and
00:13:26painting, but the guy,
00:13:28adversity always made him
00:13:31find revolutionary ways to solve problems,
00:13:35and that was the basis of his
00:13:37creation.
00:13:40A crucified Indian, above the Indian
00:13:43was the eagle from the American coin,
00:13:47and next to it were the guerrillas shooting at the
00:13:51eagle. So it was a
00:13:54protest, an anti-imperialist declaration
00:13:57that David Alfaro Siqueiros had painted in this
00:14:00mural.
00:14:08We continue.
00:14:23While you watch this commercial,
00:14:25another family may be starting the worst search of their
00:14:28lives.
00:14:37In Mexico, an average of 35 people disappear
00:14:40every day.
00:14:43Mexico deserves peace. There is a new
00:14:47way to serve Mexico: agents who investigate, analyze
00:14:50and provide elements to stop generators of
00:14:53violence, criminal cells. If you are between
00:14:5723 and 35 years old, have a degree and a vocation
00:15:01for service, become an intelligence and investigation
00:15:04agent. Register at
00:15:06reclutamiento.sspc.gov.mx.
00:15:10investigation and intelligence that deliver results in the service
00:15:13of Mexico. Government of
00:15:15Mexico.
00:15:25his grandfather in the army, what do you mean, daughter, he was in charge of the
00:15:29civil protection area, the
00:15:32the student massacre on October 2,
00:15:351968. Flight was part of the dirty
00:15:39war, the wounded years, Sunday
00:15:4216:25
00:15:45hours.
00:15:49We'll be back.
00:15:56Siqueiros, so grateful to Dodley Murphy for giving him this
00:15:59exhibition, tells him: "I'm going to give you a mural."
00:16:03So, on the garden terrace in Pacific
00:16:06Palisades, he makes him that mural,
00:16:10and it's a political mural, very clear,
00:16:13where he talks about the betrayed
00:16:14revolution.
00:16:17The third mural that master Siqueiros painted in Southern
00:16:21California was "The Present Portrait of
00:16:23Mexico." This is the mural that is best preserved and
00:16:27shows the sociopolitical conditions of Mexico in the 1930s.
00:16:311930.
00:16:37considered a danger to the American establishment for his
00:16:40critical art reflected in the three California murals,
00:16:44Siqueiros is expelled from the country and travels to Montevideo, Uruguay,
00:16:48at the suggestion of his wife Blanca Luz.
00:17:03When he arrives back in Montevideo, it's
00:17:06clear that the separation with Blanca Luz is
00:17:10imminent. He understands that this
00:17:13is a manipulation by Blanca Luz to
00:17:16return. He realizes that everything that was
00:17:20supposed to be prepared to receive him as the great
00:17:23world artist did not exist, it was not
00:17:27like that. He writes a
00:17:30very incendiary call to the painters
00:17:33of Montevideo where he says
00:17:36that yes, we have
00:17:40of the aristocratic sacristies,
00:17:43no, and take it to the
00:17:45street. He already came from Los
00:17:49Angeles with his idea
00:17:52of changing materials for
00:17:55muralism. He had already changed them there.
00:17:58Here in Montevideo, well,
00:18:01he goes to a car paint shop,
00:18:04obviously, and gets Duco and Piroxiline.
00:18:07That's how he paints "Proletarian
00:18:10Victim."
00:18:14In March 1933, from
00:18:17Montevideo, David travels alone to Buenos Aires, invited by Victoria
00:18:20Ocampo, to give a series of lectures at the Association of
00:18:24Friends of Art.
00:18:27Victoria Ocampo, they called her the foreman of
00:18:30culture, she was a friend of Eisenstein,
00:18:34she was a friend of Waldo Frank, she was a friend of
00:18:38intellectuals of the left and
00:18:39right.
00:18:42In the first conference, Siqueiros urges artists to create,
00:18:46perhaps throughout South America, the bases of a monumental
00:18:50and multi-exemplar plastic movement for the great popular
00:18:54masses. I believe that Siqueiros's
00:18:57call initiates a new
00:19:00period in Latin
00:19:03American art. Uh, we have to consider the historical
00:19:07context, as Benjamin would say, to talk a little about that,
00:19:11and to place ourselves
00:19:14at the beginning of a revolutionary century.
00:19:31He's going to give a lecture in Rosario, and when
00:19:35he returns from Rosario,
00:19:37they're going to put him in jail. They had
00:19:40denounced him for his exaggerated
00:19:44statements. It's then that he pulls
00:19:47strings and Botana
00:19:51hides him. Botana is the
00:19:55character who, in Buenos Aires, will
00:19:58allow Siqueiros to be Siqueiros, and
00:20:02he has all the unimaginable means
00:20:05at that moment.
00:20:16plastic exercise, it's not accidental that
00:20:19Spilimbergo, Castañino
00:20:22and Berny
00:20:24are the first to accept the
00:20:27call, along with the
00:20:31stage designer Lázaro from Uruguay.
00:20:33Here
00:20:35we pour out a frustrated
00:20:39passion, which was his relationship
00:20:41with Blanca Luz.
00:20:44In this way, he achieves the
00:20:47multi-perspective within the
00:20:51mural, so that these women seem to
00:20:54swim, move, forming a
00:20:58whirlwind so that whoever films
00:21:01it can put it into operation, as if it were a
00:21:04machine that has to be started.
00:21:07Blanca Luz, who liked
00:21:10to go to parties of very
00:21:13rich people, and, well, it seems
00:21:17that Siqueiros became the jealous Mexican
00:21:20macho, and well, it meant the break and the move to
00:21:24New York, and when Siqueiros
00:21:27left, there was an atrocious
00:21:30silence.
00:21:36After having an experimental workshop in New York,
00:21:39the Experimental Workshop where
00:21:42many important artists arrived, none more important than
00:21:46Jackson Pollock, who never liked him,
00:21:50that arrogant, seemingly overbearing
00:21:54Siqueiros, even though Siqueiros taught him what
00:21:58fast-drying paints were. But
00:22:01Siqueiros was more generous. I think
00:22:05it's petty on Pollock's part
00:22:07or a limitation on Pollock's part to say, "No, he's not my teacher,"
00:22:11when he's even using his
00:22:14technique, even his gestures, to
00:22:18achieve the dripping and all these
00:22:20things.
00:22:29Between Blanca Luz Brum and Angélica Arenal, he
00:22:32was with María Zunzulo and writes some wonderful
00:22:35letters, where he explains that what he is
00:22:38achieving with this mixture of paints from the cans
00:22:42are magical, wonderful
00:22:44explosions.
00:22:47He experiments with resins.
00:22:50He discovers, if you want, what he calls controlled accident.
00:22:54He describes a painting he makes about the
00:22:57birth of fascism, in which there's a
00:23:00raft on a stormy
00:23:04with oil would be glazes, and here
00:23:07they turn out to be something else because they result in
00:23:10textures and unusual transparencies
00:23:14that greatly excite
00:23:16Siqueiros.
00:23:20Siqueiros leaves for Spain, then embroiled in a civil war after
00:23:24the coup of dictator Francisco Franco, with the purpose of organizing a
00:23:28collective of anti-fascist Spanish and Latin American
00:23:32the Republic. There he reunites with his friend Angélica
00:23:36Arenal.
00:23:39The only thing that matters to him is being a militiaman, and honestly,
00:23:42the only thing he can think of in artistic
00:23:46terms is how one could paint the city.
00:23:50That is, he remains obsessed with continuing to make street
00:23:53murals.
00:23:58Siqueiros crosses the enemy lines, and well,
00:24:02he will end up earning the rank of lieutenant colonel, in a
00:24:05legion of Mexicans who were not
00:24:08few. Siqueiros also stood out
00:24:12for his intellectual side, for the relationships he made with
00:24:15figures like Hemingway, like José Renau, this
00:24:20wonderful Spanish
00:24:22artist,
00:24:25he dedicates himself body and soul to the struggle, and
00:24:28Angélica abandons her husband and pursues him to
00:24:32Spain, and for there to be some legality,
00:24:36the only Spanish general of the Republican army in the Civil
00:24:39War marries them. And a
00:24:43group of Mexicans accused Trotsky and
00:24:47the Trotskyists in Spain of having been
00:24:50columnists and returned to Mexico with that
00:24:53vision that there had been, on the part of the
00:24:56Trotskyists, a responsibility for the defeat of the
00:24:58Republic.
00:25:05In 1939, Siqueiros returns to Mexico and is hired to
00:25:08paint a mural in the Mexican Electricians'
00:25:11Union.
00:25:15Alfonso chooses the stairwell cube to use a polyangular
00:25:18perspective.
00:25:22Around that time, the Spanish exile José Renau arrives in Mexico, and
00:25:25Siqueiros incorporates him into his work team, which also includes the Spanish
00:25:29painters Antonio Rodríguez Luna and Miguel Prieto, as well as the
00:25:33Mexicans Antonio Pullol, Luis Arenal, Fanny Rabel, and
00:25:36Roberto
00:25:37Verdecio.
00:25:43Leon Trotsky arrives in his Mexican exile and leads the left-wing opposition to
00:25:46Joseph Stalin's communism.
00:25:50Since Siqueiros was so
00:25:54staunchly Stalinist, and Diego had already
00:25:57changed, first to the left opposition,
00:26:01he went to talk to... to get Trotsky
00:26:04into the country. The Americans say,
00:26:08"We weren't the ones who handled the paperwork," but
00:26:12in truth, it was through Diego's direct
00:26:14connection with Cárdenas that Trotsky was
00:26:18able to enter
00:26:19Mexico.
00:26:22On the night of May 24, Siqueiros participates in the assault on
00:26:26Leon Trotsky's house in Coyoacán, where the former head of the
00:26:29Red Army and his family remain unharmed.
00:26:36that it didn't go well for him and because
00:26:39he shouldn't have done it. It's
00:26:42terrible that he did it, well, it's the attack against
00:26:46Trotsky, having left the
00:26:49popular graphics workshop, no, there
00:26:52Siqueiros messed up, well, more than
00:26:56messed up...
00:26:59For some, it's unbelievable how a
00:27:02seasoned soldier could fail that way.
00:27:05Siqueiros's thesis that it was about denouncing that all
00:27:09of Trotsky's security guard was
00:27:12American
00:27:14is not so far-fetched.
00:27:23the mining area of Jalisco. In late
00:27:26September, Siqueiros is arrested in a large military and
00:27:29police operation in a cave near Osto Tipaquilla. And in
00:27:33October he is imprisoned in the Black Palace of Lecumberri and put on
00:27:37trial.
00:27:40From prison, Siqueiros requests an interview with presidential
00:27:44candidate Manuel Ávila Camacho, and is brought before
00:27:47him. Both recognize each other as soldiers in the
00:27:49Revolution. The head of the prison was a
00:27:53Rulfo, so they would go out partying at night, until midnight,
00:27:56sometimes arriving at dawn.
00:27:59Rulfo, Siqueiros, and Neruda.
00:28:03who was a consul, he wasn't just anyone, he was the consul of
00:28:06Chile in Mexico, but he made all
00:28:09the arrangements for Siqueiros to get out of
00:28:13prison and leave
00:28:14Mexico.
00:28:18In April 1941, he is
00:28:20deported to Chile. The authorities of that country
00:28:24confine him in the southern city of Chiyana. Once
00:28:27there, the Mexican government commissions him to paint a mural in the library of the
00:28:31Escuela México in that
00:28:32city.
00:28:38He used a material that no one would have
00:28:41thought of using: Celotex. It is
00:28:44a light and porous material, but
00:28:48it has a virtue: it is a static material. So
00:28:52it allows Siqueiros to make round
00:28:55corners, to make a complete
00:28:58arch.
00:29:02With his mutilated arms, the insurgent Galvarino lets out a cry of
00:29:06rebellion and freedom that echoes throughout our entire
00:29:09America.
00:29:11Well, with Siqueiros, I believe that for those of us who were there, the Chileans who were there,
00:29:15restoring was something we
00:29:18will not forget, without a doubt he painted it at a
00:29:21critical moment for
00:29:24Chile, but also at this moment there
00:29:28are things that are related to
00:29:30current events as well. We are always in a
00:29:34war with the
00:29:35invader,
00:29:38one part is pre-Hispanic with a
00:29:42Demok in a
00:29:44wonderful foreshortening and
00:29:48he paints Cárdenas for the only
00:29:50time,
00:29:53the piqueiros who always managed to
00:29:57get out of difficult
00:29:58situations.
00:30:02the American government
00:30:05and the Mexican government so that half and half
00:30:09pay for his trip through several Latin American
00:30:12countries to preach in the war, art of war
00:30:16and in Cuba he wants to jump to the United States and
00:30:19Nevermore, they never gave him a visa
00:30:23until
00:30:24Premortem, he
00:30:28is citing the filmmakers, the writers,
00:30:32the graphic artists,
00:30:36eh, the musicians, eh, to make a great
00:30:40movement of combat against Nazism and
00:30:43against the imperialist war, no, that is
00:30:46the fundamental meaning of the manifesto in the war, art of
00:30:50war.
00:30:55moral allegory of the equality, brotherhood of the
00:30:58white and black races.