Internationally-acclaimed Santa Fe artist Frederico Vigil uses fresco painting to keep traditional Hispanic cultural values alive. His work at the New Mexico Museum of Fine Arts in Santa Fe commemorates the Cuatro Centenario celebration of 400 years of Spanish settlement in New Mexico. Vigil also has frescos at The Albuquerque Museum, the College of Santa Fe and other major institutions. Vigil pursues fresco painting because of its permanence and its connection to New Mexico's history. Vigil learned the painstaking technique from Stephen Dimitroff who was Rivera's lead assistant fresco artist.
Murals are a form of wall art that can be executed at one location and installed in another.
Albuquerque landscape muralist Wilson Hurley has developed a technique of painting large canvases on a system of rollers. He sees his work in segments like a Chinese scroll painter. Traditionally, painting is an attempt to communicate intellectually and emotionally to a viewer. The battle between representational and non-representational art was fought on the walls of galleries and museums for more than 150 years with a plethora of art movements beginning with impressionism and ending with post modernist deconstruction. In Albuquerque Public murals reflect political propaganda, cultural ideals and historical events such as the Great Depression.