Juan O'Gorman is one of the most important artists of modern Mexico and has gone down in history thanks to his architectural works, paintings and murals. We all know the murals on the four facades of the Central Library in CU, which cover an area of 4,000 square meters; the mosaics of the SCOP; the Altarpiece "Francisco I. Madero, effective suffrage not reelection" for the National Museum of History and "Porfirian Feudalism as an antecedent of the Revolution of 1910-1914" in the Chapultepec Castle. All these murals are in buildings and museums of great dimensions and known by the great majority, however, O'Gorman's mural work began in a small library in Azcapotzalco.
After the Revolution, one of the greatest demands and concerns was to lay the foundations of an educational and cultural project for everyone, so during the administration of José Vasconcelos at the head of the Secretary of Public Education, numerous schools were built - such as the Normal School - and the Directorate of Popular Libraries was established, with the mission of establishing libraries throughout the country. Libraries were not only seen as a place to read or find books, but also to bring art closer to visitors. Thus, like many of the buildings of the time, art was in dialogue with the architecture of the spaces.
In a small space in a colonial building -which then served as Azcapotzalco's municipal palace- it was decided to install the Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Library. Vasconcelos invited Juan O'Gorman to paint a mural here, when the artist was only 20 years old. It is said that on weekends, O'Gorman would take his bicycle, brushes and sketches, to leave at 7 a.m. and make the trip from San Angel to downtown Azcapotzalco. In this library, Juan O'Gorman painted his first mural in 1926, or at least the oldest one still preserved, as he had already painted murals in some of the city's pulquerías, but none of them survive to this day.
This mural is called "Landscape of Azcapotzalco" and as its name says, O'Gorman sought to portray the landscape of Azcapotzalco, but not only that, but also its history since this is one of the oldest towns in the city.
Thus, in the mural we can find images of hills, large canals, dams and agricultural fields that symbolize the main activity of the inhabitants of Azcapotzalco at that time; a Tepanec warrior. O'Gorman also dedicated part of the mural to the modernization of the region; therefore, different buildings, a hotel, a canteen and the birth of the oil industry can be appreciated. However, the social and political criticism that would mark the artist's future work is also present, as one can read "Muerta a los fifís" on one of the facades of the buildings.
"Paisaje de Azcapotzalco" is an important piece to understand the evolution of O'Gorman's muralist production, however, for many years, the work was abandoned and was in poor condition; since the back of the library adjoined the prison, where there were water leaks that damaged the painting, so O ́Gorman intervened the mural in 1954, because the water and saltpeter had damaged a layer of pigment and a section of mural had disappeared completely. It was not until the year 2000 that, thanks to a photographic investigation, it was possible to restore the missing part of the mural.
The Fray Bartolomé de las Casas Library is not only important because it houses the first mural by Juan O'Gorman, but also because for O'Gorman art and education had to form a binomial that was always united, so that through images people could also approach and understand history and its present, so this library has fulfilled its function for almost 100 years.