Charlot’s history of those seminal first years,
The Mexican Mural Renaissance,
1920
–
1925
, is filled with intimate details and insights that could only be
told by one who was there when it actually happened. Included is a very
frank and amusing account of a critic’s
adverse review of Charlot’s first mural in
the National Preparatory School, “
The
Massacre in the Main Temple
,” and a scathing
commentary on the same mural by his friend
Rivera. Ironically, Charlot’s mural was the
first work of the
20
th century Mexican mural
movement completed in true fresco; Rivera’s
Creation
mural of
1922
–
23
was executed in
encaustic.
It was in
1945
, when Charlot was in
Mexico on a Guggenheim Fellowship, re-
searching and writing
The Mexican Mural
Renaissance,
that Angelina gave him this precious Diego Rivera sketchbook,
“in
friendship to Jean Charlot, to better conserve these drawings.
”
Diego Rivera,
Portrait of Angelina
, oil
on canvas,
1916
13
