ABSTRACT
Mexico has long held a place in the American imagination. For African American artists, Mexico has been a site of respite, rejuvenation, and inspiration. Mexico resonated in the imaginings of African American artists before the twentieth century. Nineteenth-century painter Robert S. Duncanson depicted ancient architectural ruins set in central Mexico and the Yucatan. With the onset of the Cold War at the end of World War II, Mexico offered respite for artists such as Elizabeth Catlett, Leslie Wilson, and Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs as the United States (US) government launched increasingly vicious attacks on progressive artists, intellectuals, and activists. By the early 1950s, Mexico City had become a refuge for African American artists seeking respite from repressive Cold War politics and exacerbated US racism. The legacy of Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros—and of African American artists shaped by their encounters with Mexico—reverberates in the work of many “second wave” African American muralists.
