Thursday, February 22, 2007

J C Orozco - Man on Fire











Last week we were in Guadalajara, Mexico. One of the highlights was seeing the murals of Jose Clemente Orozco. The Cabanas Cultural Institute is his Sistine Chapel, dominated by the central dome and the "Man on Fire". All the walls and ceiling of the main building are covered with these intense paintings. The photos don't do his work justice, since they are all much larger than life. His work is incredibly violent, but I like it because he uses a lot of the techniques of cartooning: caricature, exaggeration, line of action, etc.

8 comments:

William K. Moore said...

Hi Kent.. Amazing paintings!! I was in Guadalajara many times in the 80s and each time I would go and visit Orozco's fantastic murals. Could you imagine these painted on any United States "tight-ass" gvt building?? Thanks for posting these.. great memories. I met you at ASIFA a couple of times.. once when you were reviewing Milton's storyboards. Hope your project comes in on schedule and receives the proper levels of appreciation! BTW if you like latin american themes... check out my Bogota blog:
http://williamkmoore.blogspot.com/
Regards!

Barbasaurus Rex said...

These are amazing!
Thanks for posting these pictures

Barbasaurus Rex said...

"I've seen Bilibin's art in some soviet-era fairy tale books "

-Are these books still in print?
I would love to know the titles and possibly get copies.
Thanks

Shawn Dickinson said...

Wow! These ARE cool! You're right, there does seem to be lots of exaggeration, caricature, line of action, etc...These murals almost look like they're animated. I like the colors too.

Barbasaurus Rex said...

Hi Kent,
Thanks SOOOO Much for those Biliban titles!
I am definitely going to hunt them down.

diego cumplido said...

I think you shouldn't be asking yourself about why the guests can't leave the room in The Exterminating Angel...that kind of things really didn't matter to Buñuel.

It's just a fun, strange fact that was a good and entertaining excuse to develop the main characters, and to make fun of them.

That's my vision of it.

Dolce far niente said...

Hola, me ha gustado mucho tu blog, adoro el grabado y orozco es un gran pintor. mi blog es de arte www.lamanomaestra.blogspot.com y el de mi marido de ilustración y diseño gráfico www.nomparella.blogspot.com, ven a visitarnos, te pondremos en nuestros links.

Un saludo.

Diego A. Parés said...

Great stuff! Crumb influence by this 40's comics more ( uf, my english is so bad) more than the lsd do.
Thank and keep posting!