Revolutionary Art at the Centro Escolar Revolución: Examining Murals and Scrapbooks in a Mexico City Primary School

Abstract

This thesis identifies the ways in which an officially sanctioned visual lexicon in Mexico was utilized in the Centro Escolar Revolución – a primary school constructed in 1936 in Mexico City as part of a new educational ideology rooted in socialism – throughout the 1930’s-1950’s. In the following chapters, I attempt to illuminate the impact these works may have had on the children within the Centro Escolar. Children became targets of artistic educational campaigns in post-revolutionary Mexico, as conceptions about childhood began to shift and more value was placed on primary education. The way this education had been enacted, however, has primarily been examined through the ways the state and government disseminated it rather than those directly impacted – namely, children. The Centro Escolar contains eleven murals and a small photographic archive that contains multiple scrapbooks. The murals, completed by the artistic cohort known as the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revoluciónarios, have received limited scholarship, and the scrapbooks have never been analyzed. By examining the mural done by first Mexican female muralist Aurora Reyes as well as the highly personalized scrapbooks within the archive, I actively explore a plethora of roles, experiences, and societal expectations placed on post-revolutionary Mexican children. My examination accounts for the different sensorial experience each object provides, primarily perceptions of scale and touch. This thesis, through interdisciplinary investigation, traditional archival sources, and personal experience, provides a glimpse into how these works may have impacted children in the post-revolutionary period and emphasizes the significance of accounting for these experiences.