David Alfaro Siqueiros
Time for something unexpected!
David Alfaro Siqueiros’s image of a surging cloud of smoke was painted in late 1939 for a one-man show that opened on January 2, 1940, at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York. The Fire was one of six smaller landscapes done on paper. Although Siqueiros’s subjects (landscapes and figure studies, primarily) were somewhat conventional, all 17 works in the New York exhibition, including The Fire, were created with the innovative tools and materials that the artist believed were essential for creating modern revolutionary art. Siqueiros used an airbrush and stencils, and his chosen medium was pyroxylin, a lacquer also known by the trade name Duco. When dry, pyroxylin becomes shiny and inflexible, and while this was not a problem for the larger works done on the composition board, the smaller images on paper were more fragile. Fine cracks can be seen across the surface of The Fire today (the work was later remounted on a rubbery backing).
Rendered in cool grays, the cloud erupts threateningly, moving towards the viewer, highlighted against a crisp blue sky. Low hills in the foreground give way to a flat horizon that may represent the reflective surface of the ocean. The airbrush brilliantly reproduces the abstract texture of the cloud: aerated paint is literally used to represent the evanescent, moving smoke. But this was more than just a formal exercise. The painting acknowledges the advance of fascism in Europe and Asia, though through elegant metaphor rather than didactic pamphleteering. It was indeed meant to recall the destruction of the Spanish Civil War, the Nazi blitzkrieg, and the Japanese advance in China.
We present today's work thanks to the Museo Colección Blaisten.
P.S. What is war good for? Nothing! Explore with us the history of protest art that opposed human violence.
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