Between 1964 and 1971, the Mexican mural painter David Alfaro Siqueiros produced The March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos in Mexico City, his last major project and the largest mural in the world. This illustrated book mounts a careful study of the painting, which it sees as marking the end of the Mexican mural movement. The main purpose of the book is to place the mural into the social-historical context of the period of its production. Due to this approach, the mural is seen not only as a work of art, but also as a symbol and carrier of Mexican political ideology, especially as it concerns the government's attempts to continue presenting the Mexican Revolution of 1910 as the source and basis of contemporary and future social, political, and economic policy. Professor Folgarait's book provides a fascinating case-study highlighting the conflict of modernistic and naturalistic trends in art, and makes an important contribution to the study of Mexican art of the twentieth century and to the general topic of the relationship of art to politics.

In this comprehensive collection of essays, three generations of international scholars examine Mexican muralism in its broad artistic and historical contexts, from its iconic figures - Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siquieros - to their successors in Mexico, the United States, and across Latin America. These muralists conceived of their art as a political weapon in popular struggles over revolution and resistance, state modernization and civic participation, artistic freedom and cultural imperialism. The contributors to this volume show how these artists' murals transcended borders to engage major issues raised by the many different forms of modernity that emerged throughout the Americas during the twentieth century.