Facts about David Alfaro Siqueiros

Self portrait - David A. Siqueiros

• David Alfaro Siqueiros was a Mexican painter, born in Chihuahua, and trained in art in Mexico City. From 1920 to 1922 he lived in Spain and Belgium. 
• After his return to Mexico, Siqueiros took part in the revival of fresco painting effected by govern-ment sponsorship of mural decorations in public buildings, and became one of the best-known Mexican painters, generally being ranked with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco. 
• David Alfaro Siqueiros also participated in left-wing political activity, becoming a member of the Communist Party; in 1930 he served a term in prison for revolutionary agitation. Subsequently he was commissioned to execute frescoes in the United States. 
• His bold and vividly colored paintings, often representing contorted and intensely emotional figures, became famous throughout the West¬ern Hemisphere, and he received commissions to work in Uruguay and Argentina in 1932 and in Brazil in 1934.
• During the civil war in Spain, from 1936 to 1939, Siqueiros served with the Republican forces as a lieutenant colonel. 
• In 1940, after his return to México, Siqueiros was suspected by the police of complicity in the assassination in Mexico City of the Russian political exile Leon Trotsky. At first the Mexican government sought his arrest but later dropped all charges against him. 
• In 1946 David Alfaro Siqueiros went to Italy on the invitation of the Italian government and painted a number of frescoes in Rome. In addition to his mural paintings he executed many panel paintings, often in hard enamel. Among these panel paintings are "Proletarian Victim" (1933), "Collective Sui¬cide" (1936), "Echo of a Scream" (1937), and "The Sob" (1939).