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Dimensions: 35 1/2 by 41 1/4 in.
(90 by 105cm)
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Provenance: PRIVATE COLLECTION, MEXICO
Acquired from the artist by the previous owner
Thence by descent
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Exhibited: Monterrey, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey, San Ildefonso, Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Jalisco: Genio y Maestría, May 1994-January 1995, illustrated on the cover, no. 132, p. 119, illustrated in color
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Literature: Visión de México y sus Artistas, Mexico D.F., Quálitas Compañía de Seguros, 2000, p. 101, illustrated in color
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Notes: In the larger-than-life legend of Jose Clemente Orozco no figure claims a higher place than Prometheus. The artist clearly saw his own creative anguish reflected in the titanic hero-martyr's struggle to enlighten mankind. MacKinley Helm entitled his memoir of Orozco, "Man of Fire" in reference to several key paintings as well as the artist's self-association with Prometheus, the Greek hero who incurred the wrath of Olympian Zeus by giving mankind the stolen gift of fire. We catch glimpses of the man of fire in Orozco's murals at Guadalajara, in the Supreme Court, and at Dartmouth College. But he is most fully realized in Orozco's fresco at Pomona College (the first of three murals painted in the United States), and a series of related easel paintings dating to the 1930s-40s.
The Pomona Prometheus mural represents a critical moment in Orozco's development. Nearly all scholarly studies cite it as a turning point in his career, fusing all of his previous training and boldly announcing a breakthrough to full artistic maturity. Stealing sparks of inspiration from Cezanne, Michelangelo, El Greco, and his own countryman Felipe Santiago Gutierrez, through Prometheus Orozco reveals himself as a mature artist breaking the bonds of his own training to forge a new visual and mythological language. Art Historian Karen Cordero Reiman has suggested that Orozco's radical, even distorted foreshortening of the central figure was calculated to suggest the uncomfortable liminality between divinity and humanity.
Prometheus pulsates with rebellion. Orozco's frustration over the philistinism of some early critics and the constant scramble for funds to complete the ambitious project, infused the work with a special urgency, feeding the artist's identification with his protagonist.
In spite of early resistance to his vision, the Pomona fresco has since been hailed as one of his greatest achievements. "Throughout his life, [Jackson] Pollock repeatedly referred to Orozco as 'the real man' and consistently remarked that Prometheus, Orozco's mural at Pomona College in California, was 'the greatest painting in North America."[1] Jose Pijoan, the Pomona professor who had invited Orozco to paint the principal wall of the college's Frary Hall, exclaimed upon the mural's unveiling, "The Mexican artist has given us a new interpretation of a classic theme. Those who have seen his work are astonished at his aptitude for understanding old things in a new way. His creative mind realizes immediately the possibilities in an old story. The background of his life is revolutionary Mexico. But now, in the Prometheus fresco, he has shown that what he has to say is universal, not simply Mexican. He is more than a champion of the peon; he is an interpreter of the striving man of the present age and of all ages."[2]
Orozco's eventual success in California led to further commissions. Having produced many of his best-known monumental works in the 1930s and 1940s, Orozco nevertheless found himself, once again, in need of money. To raise funds, he dedicated himself to reworking themes and imagery from his most famous murals in smaller format (see for example his powerful Acordadas y Zapatistas sold in these rooms in May, 2003). At the time, Orozco scholar Justino Fernandez commented on the new project: "Lately...Orozco has worked on a series of paintings, rich in color and movement...As in his mural paintings, in these smaller-scaled works we may find Orozco's essence and his life-vision, because in these scenes...the artist is present body and soul."[3]
In some cases, Orozco took advantage of the new medium and format to make key changes to his compositions. In the Pomona fresco, Orozco crowded his hero into the upper quadrant of the wall, hemmed in by a constricting ogival arch, suggesting the hero's oppression. Rendered in oils, the present painting suggests an even more radical transgression of authority. Freed from the constraints of the refectory architecture, this Prometheus explodes upward and outward, unfettered, in a purifying conflagration. This at last, is truly Orozco's vision of Prometheus, unbound.
[1] L. Kent Wolgamott, quoted in Jose Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934, Dawn Ades, ed., W.W. Norton Company, 2002, p. 100
[2] Alma Reed, Orozco, p. 187
[3] Justino Fernandez, Jose Clemente Orozco: Forma e Idea, Mexico City, Libreria de Porrua Hnos. y Cia., 1942, p. 119-122
