Luis Arenal Bastar

Biography

The monument “Cabeza de Juárez” in Iztapalapa, on the edge of Mexico City, thirteen metres high, was built between 1972 and 1976. David Alfaro Siqueiros was supposed to paint it, but he died, and Luis Arenal and his assistants finished the work. It was his last major piece.

Sources give Arenal’s birth year differently: 1908 or 1909. There is no agreement about the place either: more often it is given as Teapa in the state of Tabasco, sometimes as Mexico City. The family moved to Aguascalientes, his father died fighting in the Mexican Revolution, and his mother took the children to the capital. Siqueiros was among his relatives: Arenal’s sister Angélica became his wife.

His schooling was haphazard. According to some accounts, he was expelled from a parish school at about thirteen, then studied mechanical engineering for two years. In 1924 he went to Los Angeles, studied architecture and washed gasoline cans to get by. In 1926 he returned to Mexico and worked as a translator in an advertising office. In 1927–1928 he studied law and sculpture at the National School of Fine Arts in Mexico City. In 1929 he was in the United States again, studying at the University of Arizona and working in restaurants. He began to paint in 1930: he exhibited and painted walls in Laguna Beach, Los Angeles, Redlands and San Bernardino.

In 1932 Siqueiros arrived in Los Angeles. With him Arenal worked on murals at the Chouinard Art School, including the fresco on cement “América Tropical”. In those same months he belonged to the Mural Block Painters, a group that also included the young Jackson Pollock.

In 1933 he returned to Mexico, and his work turned political. He headed the Mexican League Against War and Fascism, and in 1934 (by other accounts, 1933) became one of the founders and the first secretary of the League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists. Together with Juan de la Cabada he founded its magazine “Frente a Frente” in 1935. In 1936, with Roberto Berdecio, he travelled as a delegate to the first American Artists’ Congress in New York, stayed there until 1937, painted murals at Bellevue Hospital Center and exhibited.

On his return he founded the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a printmakers’ workshop, with Leopoldo Méndez and Pablo O’Higgins, and took part in all of its group exhibitions. At the same time he worked with Siqueiros on the murals “Portrait of the Bourgeoisie” and “March of Humanity”. In 1939–1940 he took part in painting the building of the Mexican Electricians’ Union with Josep Renau, Antonio Pujol, Antonio Rodríguez Luna and Miguel Prieto. In 1940, it is reported, he was among those who took part in the attack by Siqueiros’s group on Leon Trotsky’s house in Coyoacán, and as a result he left for the United States for a time. From 1940 to 1943 he travelled in South America.

In 1944–1945 he made two sculptures, one in stone and one in concrete, for Siqueiros’s mural “Cuauhtémoc Against the Myth” at the Centro de Arte Moderno in Mexico City. From 1945 to 1951 in the state of Guerrero he put his architectural skills to use, building roads, houses and bridges. There he also set up a monument in Cuetzala del Progreso, in 1948 painted a mural on Masonite panels for a rural school in Arcelia, and in 1949–1952 painted the stairwell of the state government palace. In 1949 he edited and designed the magazine “1945–1946” and made the engravings for the book “Estampas de Guerrero”. He was also one of the founders of the Salón de la Plástica Mexicana. In 1955 he helped found the Instituto Regional de Bellas Artes in Acapulco.

In 1964–1970 he again worked with Siqueiros, this time on the murals of the Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros. In 1977 he became director of the Siqueiros workshop in Cuernavaca.

Arenal died in Mexico City on 7 May 1985. A sculpture of the director of the newspaper El Día was left unfinished.