David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974)

We are grateful to Prof. Irene Herner for her assistance cataloguing this work.


This outstanding self-portrait is painted in alternating tones of black and white, the colors associated with newsprint. A series of scattered patches of white paint along the face add contouring while suggesting the visual effects of blackness with a few scattered rays of light penetrating through the somber background. The head is depicted as a seemingly solid sculptural mass whose contours and features further underscore a sense of structure and volume. Painted from a three-quarter profile, it recalls such other works from the 1930s, as Portrait of Moisés Sáenz (1930) as well as his more sculptural self-portraits from 1936 and 1939. Of note also is the massive head of curly locks rendered through the application of small brushstrokes.

Here the artist views himself through painting and projects a serene countenance that contrasts greatly with his circumstances at the time. Siqueiros had just arrived in New York City from Buenos Aires en route to Mexico after a two year exile from his homeland. He had recently separated from his great love Blanca Luz Brum, the Argentine poet whom he had married in 1932 in Los Angeles. Thus Siqueiros found himself alone, undocumented, and financially strapped. Yet despite the adversity of this moment, his determination prevailed and he responded defiantly by writing the manifesto—Towards the Transformation of the Visual Arts. In this bold manifesto, Siqueiros invites fellow artists who sympathize with the U.S. Communist Party to organize a massive workshop of experimental public art devoted to protest and propagating powerful images that oppose fascism and the impending war in Europe.

In 1936, the artist returned to New York and opened the Siqueiros Experimental Workshop on Fourteenth Street. In keeping with his political views, the Workshop was dedicated to making antifascist propaganda and endorsing the presidential candidacy of the U. S. Communist Party’s leader Earl Browder. It was against this backdrop that Siqueiros painted two spectacular self-portraits, Self-Portrait from 1936 (and an accompanying lithograph) and Self Portrait with Mirror (1937) (whereabouts currently unknown) in which he affirmed his identity as a sculptural painter (esculto-pintor) credited for having introduced innovative pictorial strategies derived from mass media practices as well as materials and techniques employed in the auto industry into the realm of painting.

Dr. Irene Herner, Professor, School of Political and Social Sciences, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City