Fresco History: July 2007 Archives

from The Walls have The Word by Melchor Peredo


Being a student, I went at times to the Palacio Nacional to invite Diego Rivera to give a conference at the School "La Esmeralda", the voluminous artist himself moved-disturbed by the interruption, slightly in its scaffold, descending his protruding eyes towards me and skewered: Yes I will go, because that is a revolutionary school. "The Yuca" that more than his assistant he was from time to time his model, posed as the face of the black slave brought by the army of Hernon Cortez from Cuba. Diego was shading with smooth tones of vineyard black before applying color. Naturally, already on the wet plaster. According to Juan O'Gorman his great friend and communist comrade the master always worked this way, what gave him total liberty at the moment of the application of color. The curious thing if this resulted for him for the fresco; his easel paintings generally in oil were executed under the impressionist principle to exclude black in the shadows. What he did instead, then, was to shade with the Complementarie's. The amazing thing is that his frescoes, initially almost grisaille (monochrome) in color, in the end, black turns out to be almost imperceptible one. What is his secret?