Existing comment:
The Murals:
"The painting depicts a festival that is celebrated each year in the city of Tehuantepec, which is very near the Pacific Coast. It is [a] harvest festival of flowers. Gaily dressed girls and women can be seen, with gorgeous gold chains around their necks and decked in festive garb. There are dancers and musicians, girls holding great wreaths of flowers, horsemen holding standards and candles of delicate workmanship which are taken to church as votive offerings. Over the center of the fresco a dancer of pagan origin moves rhythmically, dressed in brilliant colors with a headgear of feathers and shining metal."
-- The Washington Post, October 12, 1941
Tehauntepec Festival:
This scene representing the annual Festival of the Flowers in Tehuantepec, Mexico portrays women and men dancing with garlands of flowers, a family enjoying traditional food and drink, and in the center a male dancer with a dramatic Pre-Columbian mask and headdress.
Rural Scene -- Ixtacchihuarti:
This rural scene forms a pair with a similar mural on the other side of the doorway to the drawing room, with the great volcanoes of the Valley of Mexico looming over them, Ixtacchihuarti, in the case of this group of somewhat elegantly, traditionally costumed country people.
Rural Scene -- Popocatepetl:
This rural scene portrays typical agricultural activities, in the foreground, a small town with a Colonial church and government building in the middle ground, and the conical Popocatepetl volcano in the distance.
Industrial Mexico:
This scene is intended to contrast with the previous two: it celebrates modern, industrialized Mexico, with its airplanes, tractors, factories a hydroelectric plant in an urban setting in the middle ground, with the rows of men and women on horseback in the foreground intended to symbolize the continuity of Old Mexico with the new. |