While the “big three” receive the majority of credit for Mexican muralism, it is worth noting that they were not working alone. To realize these large-scale projects, these artists assembled a group of apprentices to fill in their designs. And while native-born artists composed most of these teams, creating the murals was not an entirely homegrown effort. The movement also benefited from the participation of foreign-born collaborators, most notably for this study, the exiled Spanish artist Josep Renau.
Renau was born in Valencia, Spain in 1907 where he studied drawing, painting, and poster making at Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos de Valencia. In addition to cultivating his talent for artistic production, Renau also proved to be a dedicated student of the transformative potential of art. After reading the Idealist philosophies of German thinkers like Hegel and Schelling, Renau became a fervent advocate for the power of art to provide the foundations for a new and better world (Bjerström 18–20). In 1929, he outlined this mission in his “Yellow Pamphlet” (15). During a walk that same year through a working-class neighborhood, Renau’s focus shifted. He realized that his attention should lie not on why he painted, but rather for whom. From that point forward, Renau concentrated his efforts on reaching a broader public, with particular attention paid to members of the working classes (24).
During the 1930s, his work became increasingly engaged with politics and the Republican cause. Renau served as the Director of Bellas Artes for the Second Republic. As a prominent supporter of the Republican cause, Renau realized the danger of continuing his life in Spain after the Civil War. After a brief time in the internment camp Argelès-sur-Mer on France’s coast, Renau fled Europe to live as an exile in the unfamiliar land of Mexico.
After completing an apprenticeship with Siqueiros, Renau undertook his first independent mural project, España hacia América,for the interior of the Casino de la Selva, a now defunct resort in Cuernavaca, Mexico. This piece built on the skills he had learned under Siqueiros, and expanded how space, storytelling, art, and architecture worked together to form an impactful message.
The Casino de la Selva, located in the city of Cuernavaca, was a popular destination for tourists, artists, writers, and politicians. In many ways, the casino symbolized post-revolutionary Mexican culture. Like Fuentes’s vision of post-revolutionary society in La muerte de Artemio Cruz, the hotel stood as a concrete reminder of secret affairs, powerful politicians, and booming economic growth among Mexico’s elite. The casino’s time as a secret hideaway was short-lived, however. After the government passed a national prohibition on gambling in 1934, the Cuernavaca hideaway for gaming and socializing, fell deeply into debt.
That year, Spanish immigrant Manuel Suárez acquired the building, and continued to operate it as a hotel. Suárez himself had not been involved in the Spanish Civil War, having immigrated to Mexico from Spain in 1911, at the age of 15. Despite only having distant ties to Spain, Suárez did lend his support to the exiled Spanish community when they arrived in their adopted homeland.
The Casino de la Selva, located in the city of Cuernavaca, was a popular destination for tourists, artists, writers, and politicians. In many ways, the casino symbolized post-revolutionary Mexican culture. Like Fuentes’s vision of post-revolutionary society in La muerte de Artemio Cruz, the hotel stood as a concrete reminder of secret affairs, powerful politicians, and booming economic growth among Mexico’s elite. The casino’s time as a secret hideaway was short-lived, however. After the government passed a national prohibition on gambling in 1934, the Cuernavaca hideaway for gaming and socializing, fell deeply into debt.
That year, Spanish immigrant Manuel Suárez acquired the building, and continued to operate it as a hotel. Suárez himself had not been involved in the Spanish Civil War, having immigrated to Mexico from Spain in 1911, at the age of 15. Despite only having distant ties to Spain, Suárez did lend his support to the exiled Spanish community when they arrived in their adopted homeland. As Candela’s team worked on the casino’s exterior, Spanish exile artist Josep Renau, began adorning the casino’s interior walls with a mural of Spanish and Mexican history.
Renau’s mural, España hacia América, recontextualized the classic Spanish imagery used to promote Francoism, while inviting the diverse population of hotel guests into a dialog about the transcendental possibilities of hispanismo. As Renau explained the project,
"El primer muro desarrolla una síntesis de la historia de España, hasta la Conquista de México, subrayando el carácter fundamental de un impulso histórico hacia América. El segundo muro (frente al primero) expresará el dramático sentido cósmico-mitológico de las civilizaciones mexicanas, describiendo muy particularmente la historia y la cosmografía azteca, en contraste con el camino místico racional de la civilización clásica española. La composición de estos dos muros, desarrollándose paralelamente y en la misma dirección, vendrá a determinar en el tercer muro (que los une) el violento choque de dos corrientes históricas distintas entre sí, consumándose el hecho de la Conquista, de la consubstancia física y espiritual entre los dos pueblos. El cuarto muro representará el México actual, los valores de su nacionalidad y de su independencia, mirando a un porvenir de progreso y superación" (Renau, Untitled n.p., my emphasis).
Renau only partially completed this narrative of Spanish and Mexican history. As he finished his work on the first of the four murals, rumors began to swirl regarding Suárez’s insolvency, and by 1950, the project was suspended entirely (523).
The completed portion of his project, known as España hacia América, combines the space’s architectural form and function with images of well-known historical events and their aftermath to create this tragic telling of Spanish history. As viewers progress through the corridor, the room imparts a linear progression of Spanish history, starting with the cave paintings of Altamira and working chronologically toward the conquest of the Americas.
For this page, I have used the H5P suite of tools to create interactive representations of the mural's images. These include image sliders that allow the viewer to compare two images side by side and embedded hotspots that contain details about the events and figures featured in the mural.
To forge the transatlantic bonds at the heart of the hispanismo ideology, Spanish intellectuals like socialist philosophers José Gaos and María Zambrano, the poet Juan Larrea, and the artist Josep Renau used their works to raise awareness of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War and what they perceived as the crisis of Western modernity. Renau found artistic traction for his message of social justice in the form of a double parable. On a narrative level, his piece related a visual parable of Spanish history. At the same time, the artist also produced an acted parable through the creation of the mural itself.
At the core of hispanismo was a desire to impart a unifying worldview, and España hacia América stands as a permanent example of how a Spanish artist worked alongside the masters of Mexican muralism to learn his craft. By working with Mexican artists, the production of Renau’s images modeled hispanismo’s claims to transatlantic cooperation for the Mexican public. Renau embraced an artform that was the predominant means of painting in his adopted country and he actively participated in the public spaces in Latin America. He believed that public art held the potential for aesthetic persuasion capable of supplanting the hispanidad narrative with one of hispanismo. Whereas hispanidad sought to limit access to knowledge to an elite group, Renau’s artwork drew on the public nature of muralism to declare an egalitarian stance toward sharing information. His images intersected with his lived experience to produce a layered, discursive parable about celebrating international collaboration and culture. Both his artwork and his role as creator underscored art’s capacity to communicate the collective ethos for a universal moral accord and his concrete actions worked toward culturally reestablishing a transatlantic relationship.
As viewers progress through the corridor, the room imparts a linear progression of Spanish history, starting with the cave paintings of Altamira and working chronologically toward the conquest of the Americas. As soon as visitors cross the threshold, they encounter a blue sky over a cave with a large animal skull. The seemingly sunny portrayal of Spain’s cultural legacy rapidly shifts to a foreboding tone in the space of just a few meters. As if signaling to viewers that Spanish history had turned a corner when it embraced subjugation, Renau uses the room’s corner to transition from his initial portrayal of blue skies to a menacing portrayal of grey clouds, raging flames and fierce ocean waves. The angry seas carry ships of curious explorers toward new lands, but rather than smooth sailing, what follows are painful moments of armed conflict that engulf Spanish heroes in flames. In much the same way, at the other extreme of the mural, the flames reemerge, stoked by a sword-carrying hand of a conquistador. The Spanish conquest makes its way to the Americas as a spreading fire that threatens the tranquil, aqua waters of the Americas. The peaceful indigenous landscape reinforces the destructive and imposing force of the Spanish explorers. The result is a tragedy-based history of Spain’s exploration and expansion where imperial glory is severely tempered by an atmosphere of menacing pathos.
By highlighting the negative impacts of the Roman conquest, the Reconquista, the Golden Age, and the colonial era, as well as the idyllic nature of pre-conquest America, Renau elevated hispanismo values over the beliefs of the hispanidad ideology. In this way, the mural’s images functioned together to critique the hierarchical hispanidad cosmovision problematically touted as friendship, and by extension, to promote the alternative hispanismo ideology founded in morality, liberty, and transatlantic cooperation.
Throughout the mural, Renau juxtaposes positive environments that feature bright skies, peaceful environments, and cultural contributions with scenes of war and suffering. The contrast between these vignettes provides the viewer with an affirmative moral example at the core of the visual parable.
Use the slider bars in the center of each of the images below to view Renau's two portrayals of Spanish history.
Notice the images of the victims of Rome's violent conquest in the bottom left (in grey).
On the left, the battles of the Reconquista rage. On the right, the collective representation of Spain’s most renowned literary and cultural contributors, including El Cid, Miguel de Cervantes, Seneca, Santa Teresa, and Alfonso “El Sabio” are all placed under the protective arms of the allegory of Liberty.
As portrayed in the section of the mural below, a disembodied, sword-wielding hand has covered an evangelical book. Instead of taking steps toward evangelization, Renau portrays the conquistadors as taking aim at Latin America with their cannons, crosses and cavalry. In contrast, in the Latin American section of the mural, the flames give way to a vibrant sun and teal-colored waters. As one’s eyes reach the opposite end of the piece, the leitmotifs of verdant trees, tranquil aqua waters, and a bright sky celebrate the Latin American experience. It is an environment that is remarkably similar to how the story of Spanish civilization began, with bodies, sky, and water.
Click on the red hotspots to pull up text and video explanations of the events and figures featured in Renau's mural.
Below is a lesson plan that I created for using Renau's mural to teach Spanish history and to consider how historical narratives are created. The project asks students to use Knightlab's Timeline to place the mural's images along a chronology and add annotations of the events portrayed. This lesson engages the presentational mode of writing at the intermediate to advanced levels.