Jos Clemente Orozco was born in Mexico in the year 1883 and was raised with

the small city of Zapotln el Grande. His parents moved to Mexico City when he was

still young in hopes of living a better life although this had the parents working hard as

they were living on poverty most of the times. Orozco would witness the hardships of

many people around him and on one day while going to school, he saw paintings that

would intrigue him and begin his understanding of the power of the arts for political

revolt. Although he had interest in these arts, he would leave Mexico City and be sent

away by his parents to study agricultural engineering which was something he had little

to no interest in. Orozcos father passed away so he then chased after his interest which

was to art. He probably did not have much free time due to the fact that as he was

taking classes, he was supporting his mother with small jobs.

Tragedy strikes in many ways as on Mexicos Independence Day, Orozco was

experimenting with fireworks and created an explosion on accident which was left

unchecked by a doctor for days so he soon had to amputate his left hand. However, he

did not let this become a detriment to his skills as an artist as he began painting murals.

The idea behind these murals were to spread campaign messages. Orozcos paintings

were identified uniquely apart from other works and he became known for painting

works that had a focus on human suffering although he was still underrated as an artist.

He got married to Margarita Valladares and had three children and several years after

he went to United States of America. There he would make some popular murals within

colleges and some of these were really big as they can take months or years to

complete. One of these works housed inside the college is part of a mural called The

Gods of the Modern World.

 In his work The Gods of the Modern World, Orozco was allowed to portray

American educators as skeletons and one of the skeletons was giving a dead embryo to

the skeleton mother laying on guns that turned into books and the background is filled

with flames. The meaning of this painting as said from Orozco was that institutional

education is not capable of producing good education or good people as he protests

against the restraints against educators. Orozco wants a more creative use of

knowledge rather than just learning things just for the sake of it being there. Other

messages of the painting may include that relying too much on technology for education

can be consequential or that American educators are capitalists who contribute to the

population which unquestionably obeys. All these points given and it seems that Orozco

was actually directing this towards the college and using the college as a meaning

behind his paintings. So how did this mural and all other works that have similar

meaning to the work came to be within the college? The college had many faculty and

staff that were open to learning more about other traditions and so they were open to

learning about murals.

http://www.etchings.com/orozco-at-dartmouth.html

http://www.biography.com/people/jos-clemente-orozco-9429586