David Alfaro Siqueiros

Proletarian Mother

Ana Gabriela Garca Gmez, Diana Gonzlez Fonseca, Luisa Fernanda Hernndez Reynoso,
Paula Regina Vega Tagle (Licenciatura en Historia del Arte, Universidad Iberoamericana)
This image presents a compact space, bounded by three walls, enclosing a seated woman
hugging her knees with both arms and tightly clasped hands. Her red dress and the green shawl
covering her head contrast with the dark palette of the background. Swarthy and with rugged
features, the expression of her downward curving lips, sloping eyebrows and empty staring eyes
denote a gesture of anguish. On each of her shoulders, two figures in white shirts, apparently
boys, both embrace and restrain the woman. At her feet, lying face up on a folded red cloth, a
naked infant waves his legs and raises his arms toward his mother.
Siqueiros painted the canvas in 1931, during his house arrest in Taxco, a year after he
was imprisoned in the Lecumberri penitentiary for the second time, after being accused of
rebellion and participating in an attempt on the life of President Pascual Ortiz Rubio in 1930.
His prison experience led him to return to painting as a means of protest. The compressed space
of Proletarian Mother recalls the walls of the prison, which could also be interpreted as a
metaphor for the proletarian condition and the burden of childrearing on women. The
relationship here between mother and child can also be linked to the Christian iconography of
the Nativity, which implies a correspondence between this working class mother and the Holy
Virgin. However, her absent gaze seems to reveal an indifference to her surroundings and to the
child who demands her attention, suggesting that the alienated social condition of the mother is
mirrored in her relationship with her children.
The confined space, dark colors and the gestures of the mother and children symbolize
the psychic opression produced by their economic status. The contrast between the linear spatial
composition and the exaggerated volume of the bodies, is related to the concepts of
poliangularity, monumentality and materiality that are central to Siqueiros aesthetic proposal.
The first concept is evident in the incorporation of different points of view in the geometric
composition. The second is seen in the block-like quality of the human figure which refers to the
pre-Hispanic tradition in architecture and sculpture. The third, is manifested in the choice of
materials; the jute sacks used as the painting surface and the thickness of the oil paint that
provides a heightened texture and volume, on the one hand reveal the economic status of the
painter at the time, and on the other evoke the material conditions associated with the
proletariat.
"The Mother" as an archetypal figure in post-revolutionary Mexico, is defined as a
woman who, in addition to working, protecting and nurturing, is charged with procreation. An
idealization of the maternal figure is then generated, forging an emotional bond that makes her
incapable of detachment from her children. This idealization and its iconographic
representation--a mother with a child in arms, a caring gesture and a rebozo--prevails through
time. However, this idealized figure assumes contradictory attributes in the work of Siqueiros.
In contrast with Peasant Mother (Madre campesina), painted in the previous year, which
represents this traditional maternal ideal, Proletarian Mother represents an atypical maternity
that breaks with stereotypical characterizations.
Siqueiros aesthetic discourse is tied to his Marxist ideology: ideas are articulated
through matter. The idea of a homeland is embodied here in an aporia: a Virginthe mantle-
bearing womanwho wears the colors of the Mexican flag, but who ignores the cries of her
child, preferring to clasp her own arms tightly rather than cradling her offspring. This is not a
traditional representation of a mother, and much less, of a Madonna. Therefore, while the
homeland is conventionally represented through the binomial: good mother-good government,
here Siqueiros presents a travesty of this pairing, inverting it to reveal a mother who is
dehumanized by her proletarian condition, implying symbolically that the government turns its
back on its maternal responsibility to the Mexican people.
The Proletarian Mother is represented thus as a vessel, reduced to her role as a
childbearer, who occupies a social space but does not embody her maternal function. In
psychoanalysis, the mother-son relationship is read as dominated-dominant. The two men who
imprison the mother exemplify this relationship. Will the child at the womans feet also become
her oppressor as he assumes his role in the patriarchal structure?