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He gave these ideas a heroic style, based on a realism with an expressionist character, consciously linked to the old Mexican artistic traditions, violently dynamic and widely manufactured.
He was born in Ciudad Guzmán (Zapotlán el Grande), Jalisco, in 1883; he died in Mexico City in 1949. Together with his family, he moved to Guadalajara and then to the country's Capital, arriving in 1890. Still being a child, he met José Guadalupe Posadas, and his pictures were what made Orozco take interest in painting.
He attended to some drawing classes at the Academy. He studied agriculture (3 years in San Jacinto) and high school. He finally came back to San Carlos and stayed there from 1906 to 1910. From this year to 1916 (when he presented his first individual exhibition at the Biblos Bookstore) he drew caricatures for El Hijo del Ahuizote; he was part of the illustrator staff of La Vanguardia (Orizaba, 1914); he painted watercolor and oil pictures
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When he came back to Mexico, he realized a large panel for the Fine Arts Palace, "Katharsis" (1934), commented by Justino Fernández as: "a mechanized, brutalized, prostituted, and chaotic horror world (said by the critic, in Modern and Contemporary Art of Mexico, 1952).
When the renaissance of the mural painting began in 1922, Orozco reserved for himself the walls of the large patio at the National High School, a former jesuitic college, San Ildelfonso. In that of 1947, he showed the series "Los Teules", related to the conquest of Mexico. " At the vestibule of the same building, Orozco painted some panel named "The people gets close to the school doors". "
From 1936 to 1939, he worked in Guadalajara: at the Main Auditorium of the University, he painted the forum walls ("The people and the leaders", in the front, and allegories of forsake and the Revolution, on the side walls), and the cupola ("The several attitudes of the human being"); in the staircase of the Government Palace, "The great portrait of Hidalgo holding a burning torch", "Political circus", and "Negative forces"; and at the chapel of the Cabañas Orphanage, 40 great frescos paited on the architectural sections of the whole building.
In 1947, architect Mario Pani offered him the opportunity to realize an outdoors work, at the recently finished National Teachers School building.
On the pendentive, the Revolution; on the ring, the creative activities; and in the cupole, about the anthopomorphous allegories of imagination, reflection, and creation: the fire man, surrounded by flames, consuming himself in his own realization need.
During the same year, he travelled to New York to paint, requested by the Modern Art Museum, a panel divided in 6 movable parts, named "Dive Bomber"; and he began the frescos at the Supreme Justice Court of the Nation, and finished in 1941.
In 1946, he received the National Prize of Arts.
From 1927 to 1934, he lived in the United States.
Founder member of the Colegio Nacional, he presented 6 exhibitions in that institution, as from 1943.
In 1948, he made, for the Reform Hall of the National History Museum, at the Chapultepec Castle, the panel "Juárez resuscitated", a monumental protrait of the hero, located among figures of republicans holding weapons and torches against aristocracy and clergy, over the shrouded dead body of Maximilian.
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