Upon his return, he was commissioned to paint Catharsis (1934) at the Palace of Fine Art in Mexico City. Through these monumental projects, Orozco achieved international recognition, and in 1934 he returned triumphantly to Mexico. Prometheus proved a great success, which led to other major mural projects like Call to Revolution and Table of Universal Brotherhood (1930-1931) at the New School in New York and The Epic of American Civilization (1932-1934) at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. His first major commission was the mural Prometheus (1930) at Pomona College in California.
In 1927 he arrived in the United States, where he spent the next seven years. Frustrated by the situation, Orozco along with many of his peers decided to leave Mexico in search of new opportunities. The changing political climate also prompted attacks by critics and conservatives.
In 1927, the government withdrew its support and patronage from artists like Orozco, and public commissions became a rarity.
For artists like Orozco, Muralism served as a tool for social change and civic engagement, exploring themes of human suffering. The project, which was part of an initiative led by the Minister of Public Education José Vasconcelos, ignited the Mexican Muralism movement. Orozco joined the Muralist movement in 1923 when he was commissioned to paint the walls of the National Preparatory School in Mexico City, alongside Rivera, Siqueiros, Fernando Leal, and Jean Charlot. The Mexican Revolution was a formative experience for Orozco, who worked at the time as a cartoonist, making political illustrations for local publications like The Vanguard – a revolutionary newspaper edited by painter and writer Gerardo Murillo, who assumed the name Dr. He took night classes in drawing at the Academy of San Carlos and officially enrolled to study painting in 1907.
He initially enrolled to study agronomy, before switching to architecture at the National Preparatory School in Mexico City. Orozco was born in Jalisco, Mexico, and began to show interest in art in 1890 after his family moved to Mexico City. Orozco’s works often depicted subjects related to political and historical events and allegories of the ongoing human struggle for freedom and justice. The movement was led by Los Tres Grandes, the three great muralists: Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Through commissions, the government promoted murals that had potent social and political messages about the country’s history and future. The Mexican painter José Clemente Orozco is best known for his political murals initiating Mexican Muralism – a movement that began in the 1920s intending to unite the country after the Mexican Revolution.
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