David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of the great Mexican artists of the twentieth century, painted Tropical America in 1932. The mural depicts a Mexican Indian, crucified on a double cross beneath an American eagle, with two sharpshooters taking aim at the eagle from a nearby rooftop. Commissioned for the Plaza Art Center, the mural was controversial from the start and within a year of its completion was partially covered with white paint; within a decade, it was completely painted over. Eighty years after it was first unveiled, Tropical America has been restored through a partnership between the Getty Conservation Institute and the City of Los Angeles. This bus trip will visit the mural, along with the new interpretive center that explores the mural in its different contexts—as an important document in the history of Los Angeles, as a political statement on the time in which it was created, as a monument of the Mexican mural movement of the twentieth century, and for its significant influence on mural artists in Los Angeles.
Isabel Rojas-Wiliams, Executive Director for the (MCLA) will meet the group to talk about the mural and the significance of its restoration.
Open to 7Cs staff, faculty, and students. To sign up for the trip, email Terri Geis at terri.geis@pomona.edu