Siqueiros: Walls of Passion

A documentary film about revolutionary Mexican visual artist David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974) and the resurrection of his Los Angeles mural "América Tropical," located at the birthplace of Los Angeles. One of the great Mexican artists of the 20th century and one of three great Mexican muralists (with Diego Rivera and José Clemente Orozco), Siqueiros was a controversy-stirring revolutionary and lifetime activist who lived with theatrical flair and painted on an epic scale. Fearlessly adventurous in his combat of discrimination, fascism, and oppression, he painted murals throughout the Americas, shot down rivals in the Mexican Revolution, commanded battalions in the Spanish Civil War, and challenged fellow artists the world over to paint for the Common Good. During his time in the U.S. he taught Jackson Pollack and other American artists in New York to embrace accidental painting techniques and during a stay in Los Angeles in1932, painted the street mural "América Tropical" an apocalyptic statement that cemented Siqueiros as a global icon of humanitarian defiance and was later championed by the Chicano movement. In 1988, the Getty Conservation Institute began the conservation of the mural, and in October 2012, the Getty and the City of Los Angeles completed the $9 million America Tropical Interpretative Center. Through interviews of the artist's friends and family, scholars, and activists, the film offers a vision of an artist ahead of his time with a resurgent relevance for people today.