Between 1964 and 1971, the Mexican mural painter David Alfaro Siqueiros
produced The March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos in Mexico
City, his last major project and the largest mural in the world. This
illustrated book mounts a careful study of the painting, which it sees
as marking the end of the Mexican mural movement. The main purpose of
the book is to place the mural into the social-historical context of the
period of its production. Due to this approach, the mural is seen not
only as a work of art, but also as a symbol and carrier of Mexican
political ideology, especially as it concerns the government's attempts
to continue presenting the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as the source and
basis of contemporary and future social, political, and economic policy.
Professor Folgarait's book provides a fascinating case-study
highlighting the conflict of modernistic and naturalistic trends in art,
and makes an important contribution to the study of Mexican art of the
twentieth century and to the general topic of the relationship of art to
politics.