The Murals
Cueva del Río’s painting style is very much in the Rivera tradition: strongly modeled figures, bold colors, and heavy symbolism. We can see in a photo of the artist at work that he achieved these bold, simplified shapes by using a black outline technique. Water colors were applied al fresco, that is, on wet plaster. Cueva del Río worked with his left hand only, as his right hand was disabled. It has been suggested that because the Embassy murals were begun when Cueva del Río was only 23 years old, and completed eight years later, when he was 31, that the style and emphases become simpler and more subdued as we progress up the stairway.
BANK OF AMERICA ART CONSERVATION PROJECT
Thanks to a grant from the Bank of America Art Conservation Project, the Institute welcomed expert art conservationists and their students from the National School of Conservation, Restoration, and Museography of the National Institute of Anthropology and History to perform a months-long restoration of the murals. The project treated the alterations and deterioration from natural aging and anthropologic causes to restore the fresco, now more than 70 years old, to its original state. This timely revitalization of this cherished work of art allowed it to continue to serve as a valuable education resource and emblem of cultural diplomacy.
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.
Continued The watercolor study for this Festival scene became well known as the cover for the September 1, 1933, issue of Town & Country.
This scene is dominated by the mythological founding of the Aztec capital at Tenochtitlan, present-day Mexico City, where an eagle with a serpent in its beak perched on a cactus, with the towering temple-pyramids of the city in its heyday in the background and the bearded god Quetzalcoatl in the upper left.
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, Ixtaccihuatl, in the case of this group of somewhat elegantly, traditionally costumed country people, and Popocatepetl, in the following scene.
The Panamerican mural symbolizes friendship among North, Central, and South American countries, with notable historic hemispheric leaders (clockwise from upper right): Washington (US), Hidalgo (Mexico, Bolívar (Venezuela), Martí (Cuba), Lincoln (US) and Juárez (Mexico).
This scene is intended to contrast with the previous two: it celebrates modern, industrialized Mexico, with its airplanes, tractors, factories and 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. This scene was signed and dated by the artist in 1935.
This rural scene portrays typical agricultural activities in the foreground, a small town with Colonial church and government building in the middle ground, and the conical Popocatepetl volcano in the distance.
This scene portrays a heroic Christopher Columbus planting the Spanish flag in the New World, backed by the Church and Spanish military might. The artist’s original plan called for a portrayal of Cortés here, possibly against the same background.