The 'uncomfortable' muralist who portrayed the struggle of women in Mexico

Aurora Reyes, the 'uncomfortable' muralist who portrayed the struggle of women in Mexico

The artist did not have the government support that was granted to other muralists, since she was known for her activism in favor of feminism and the student movement of 1968.

In 1945, Aurora Reyes Flores painted a mural that questioned the use of the shawl in the clothing of women of the time. According to the story of the writer Margarita Aguilar Urban, in the piece a peasant woman appeared carrying a baby on her back, and on her forehead she held a bundle of firewood with this traditional garment. This work, measuring 2.5 by 1.3 meters, mysteriously disappeared after its exhibition at a livestock fair organized by the Secretariat of Women's Social Action of the National Peasant Confederation. No images have been released documenting what she looked like.

This would be one of the first signs of the “oblivion” to which the artist was sentenced who, despite having gone down in history as the first Mexican muralist, was never commissioned by the government to intervene in public spaces, as happened with her male counterparts. , Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.

Who was Aurora Reyes?
“The Puppy,” as she was nicknamed by her family, spent the first years of her life in the Chihuahuan Desert. She was the granddaughter of Bernardo Reyes so, after the general's execution in the Tragic Decade, his heirs settled in Mexico City. Aurora's childhood in the capital was complicated, since the Kings were seen as enemies of the regime and had to keep a low profile, so the family moved to a modest neighborhood in La Lagunilla. Once the Government offered them amnesty, Aurora was able to enter school, since she no longer had to work selling bread on the streets.

In 1921 she studied at the National Preparatory School, where she met Frida Kahlo, with whom she would establish a years-long friendship that was captured in the work Portrait of Frida in Front of the Mirror. She also continued her preparation at the Academy of San Carlos, but did not complete her studies. Even so, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) hired her as a teacher of fine arts, and it was in her teaching where Aurora found her true vocation, in addition to one of the thematic axes that marked her artistic vision. . Her first mural was Attack on Rural Teachers, with which she condemned a massacre of teachers that took place in San Felipe Torres Mochas, Guanajuato, in 1936.

https://elpais.com/mexico/2023-09-09