Question: What was on the first modern Mexican mural?
About the article "Mexican muralism", section "Antecedents".

Candidate passages:
Mexican Renaissance refers to the Mexican muralism movement between 1920 and 1950.
The phrase was first used in "Idols behind Altars" by Anita Brenner, with Jean Charlot.
Charlot also discussed it in his 1963 book, "The Mexican Mural Renaissance": 
In the autumn of 1927, Rivera arrived in Moscow, accepting an invitation to take part in the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution.
The following year, while still in Russia, he met the visiting Alfred H. Barr, Jr., who would soon become Rivera's friend and patron, as well as the founding director of the Museum of Modern Art.
Rivera was commissioned to paint a mural for the Red Army Club in Moscow, but in 1928 he was ordered out by the authorities because of involvement in anti-Soviet politics, and he returned to Mexico.
In 1929, Rivera was expelled from the Mexican Communist Party.
His 1928 mural "In the Arsenal" was interpreted by some as evidence of Rivera's prior knowledge of the murder of Julio Antonio Mella allegedly by Stalinist assassin Vittorio Vidali.
After divorcing Guadalupe (Lupe) Marin, Rivera married Frida Kahlo in August 1929.
Also in 1929, the first English-language book on Rivera, American journalist Ernestine Evans's "The Frescoes of Diego Rivera", was published in New York.
In December, Rivera accepted a commission to paint murals in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca from the American Ambassador to Mexico.
In September 1930, Rivera accepted an invitation from architect Timothy L. Pflueger to paint for him in San Francisco.
After arriving in November accompanied by Kahlo, Rivera painted a mural for the City Club of the San Francisco Stock Exchange for US$2,500 and a fresco for the California School of Fine Art, later relocated to what is now the Diego Rivera Gallery at the San Francisco Art Institute.
Kahlo and Rivera worked and lived at the studio of Ralph Stackpole, who had suggested Rivera to Pflueger.
Rivera met Helen Wills Moody, a famous tennis player, who modeled for his City Club mural.
In November 1931, Rivera had a retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City; Kahlo was present.
Between 1932 and 1933, he completed a famous series of twenty-seven fresco panels entitled "Detroit Industry" on the walls of an inner court at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
During the McCarthyism of the 1950s, a was placed in the courtyard defending the artistic merit of the murals while attacking his politics as "detestable.
"His mural "Man at the Crossroads", begun in 1933 for the Rockefeller Center in New York City, was removed after a furor erupted in the press over a portrait of Vladimir Lenin it contained.
When Diego refused to remove Lenin from the painting, Diego was ordered to leave.
One of Diego's assistants managed to take a few pictures of the work so Diego was able to later recreate it.
The American poet Archibald MacLeish wrote six "irony-laden" poems about the mural.
"The New Yorker" magazine published E. B.
White's poem "I paint what I see: A ballad of artistic integrity".
As a result of the negative publicity, a further commission was canceled to paint a mural for an exhibition at the Chicago World's Fair.
Rivera issued a statement that with the money left over from the commission of the mural at Rockefeller Center (he was paid in full though the mural was supposedly destroyed.
Rumors have floated that the mural was actually covered over rather than brought down and destroyed.
), he would repaint the same mural over and over wherever he was asked until the money ran out.
In December 1933, Rivera returned to Mexico, and he repainted "Man at the Crossroads" in 1934 in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.
This surviving version was called "Man, Controller of the Universe".
On June 5, 1940, invited again by Pflueger, Rivera returned for the last time to the United States to paint a ten-panel mural for the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco.
"Pan American Unity" was completed November 29, 1940.
As he was painting, Rivera was on display in front of Exposition attendees.
He received US$1,000 per month and US$1,000 for travel expenses.
The mural includes representations of two of Pflueger's architectural works as well as portraits of Kahlo, woodcarver Dudley C. Carter, and actress Paulette Goddard, who is depicted holding Rivera's hand as they plant a white tree together.
Rivera's assistants on the mural included the pioneer African-American artist, dancer, and textile designer Thelma Johnson Streat.
The mural and its archives reside at City College of San Francisco. 
Mexico has had a tradition of painting murals, starting with the Olmec civilization in the pre Hispanic period and into the colonial period, with murals mostly painted to evangelize and reinforce Christian doctrine.
The modern tradition has its roots in the 19th century, with this use of political and social themes.
The first Mexican mural painter to use philosophical themes in his work was Juan Cordero in the mid 19th century.
Although he did mostly work with religious themes such as the cupola of the Santa Teresa Church and other churches, he painted a secular mural at the request of Gabino Barreda at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria (since disappeared).
The latter 19th century was dominated politically by the Porfirio Díaz regime.
This government was the first to push for the cultural development of the country, supporting the Academy of San Carlos and sending promising artists abroad to study.
However, this effort left out indigenous culture and people, with aim of making Mexico like Europe.
Gerardo Murillo, also known as Dr. Atl, is considered to be the first modern Mexican muralists with the idea that Mexican art should reflect Mexican life.
Academy training and the government had only promoted imitations of European art.
Atl and other early muralists pressured the Diaz government to allow them to paint on building walls to escape this formalism.
Atl also organized an independent exhibition of native Mexican artists promoting many indigenous and national themes along with color schemes that would later appear in mural painting.
The first modern Mexican mural, painted by Atl, was a series of female nudes using “Atlcolor” a substance Atl invented himself, very shortly before the beginning of the Mexican Revolution .
Another influence on the young artists of the late Porfirian period was the graphic work of José Guadalupe Posada, who mocked European styles and created cartoons with social and political criticism.
The Mexican Revolution itself was the culmination of political and social opposition to Porfirio Díaz policies.
One important oppositional group was a small intellectual community that included Antonio Curo, Alfonso Reyes and José Vasconcelos.
They promoted a populist philosophy that coincided with the social and political criticism of Atl and Posada and influenced the next generation of painters such as Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
These ideas gained power as a result of the Mexican Revolution, which overthrew the Díaz regime in less than a year.
However, there was nearly a decade of fighting among the various factions vying for power.
Governments changed frequently with a number of assassination, including that of Francisco I. Madero who initiated the struggle.
It ended in the early 1920s with one-party rule in the hands of the Álvaro Obregón faction, which became the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI).
During the Revolution, Atl supported the Carranza faction and promoted the work of Rivera, Orozco and Siqueiros, who would later be the founders of the muralism movement.
Through the war and until 1921, Atl continued to paint murals among other activities including teaching the Mexico’s next generation of artists and muralists.
After nearly a century since the beginning of the movement, Mexican artists still produce murals and other forms of art with the same “mestizo” message.
Murals can be found in government buildings, former churches and schools in nearly every part of the country.
One recent example is a cross cultural project in 2009 to paint a mural in the municipal market of Teotitlán del Valle, a small town in the state of Oaxaca.
High school and college student from Georgia, United States, collaborated with town authorities to design and paint a mural to promote nutrition, environmental protection, education and the preservation of Zapotec language and customs.
Mexican muralism brought mural painting back to the forefront of Western art in the 20th century with its influence spreading abroad, especially promoting the idea of mural painting as a form of promoting social and political ideas.
It offered an alternative to non-representational abstraction after World War I with figurative works that reflect society and its immediate concerns.
While most Mexican muralists had little desire to be part of the international art scene, their influence spread to other parts of the Americas.
Notable muralists influenced by Mexican muralism include Carlos Mérida of Guatemala, Oswaldo Guayasamín of Ecuador and Candido Portinari of Brazil .
Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros all spent time in the United States.
Orozco was the first to paint murals in the late 1920s at Pomona College in Claremont, California, staying until 1934 and becoming popular with academic institutions.
During the Great Depression, the Works Progress Administration employed artists to paint murals, which paved the way for Mexican muralists to find commissions in the country.
Rivera lived in the United States from 1930 to 1934.
During this time, he put on an influential show of his easel work at the Museum of Modern Art.
The success of Orozco and Rivera prompted U.S. artists to study in Mexico and opened doors for many other Mexican artists to find work in the country.
Siqueiros did not fare as well.
He was exiled to the US from Mexico in 1932, moving to Los Angeles.
During this time, he painted three murals, but they were painted over.
América Tropical, the only surviving public mural by David Alfaro Siqueiros in the United States is being conserved and construction of an adjoining visitor center is expected to be completed by 2012 or 2013.
The concept of mural as political message was transplanted to the United States, especially in the former Mexican territory of the Southwest.
It served as inspiration to the later Chicano Mural Movement but the political messages are different. 
José Clemente Orozco was born in 1883 in Zapotlán el Grande (now Ciudad Guzmán), Jalisco to Rosa de Flores Orozco.
He married Margarita Valladares, and had three children.
At the age of 21, Orozco lost his left hand while working with gunpowder to make fireworks.
José Guadalupe Posada, a satirical illustrator whose engravings about Mexican culture and politics challenged Mexicans to think differently about post-revolutionary Mexico, worked in full view of the public in shop windows located on the way Orozco went to school.
In his autobiography, Orozco confesses, "I would stop my way to and from school and spend a few enchanted minutes in watching … This was the push that first set my imagination in motion and impelled me to cover paper with my earliest little figures; this was my awakening to the existence of the art of painting."
(Orozco, 1962) He goes to say that watching Posada's engraving decorated gave him his introduction to the use of color.
After attending school for Agriculture and Architecture, Orozco studied art at the Academy of San Carlos.
With Diego Rivera, he was a leader of the artist movement known as Mexican Muralism.
An important distinction he had from Rivera was his critical view of the Mexican Revolution.
While Rivera was a bold, optimistic figure, touting the glory of the revolution, Orozco was less comfortable with the bloody toll the social movement was taking.
Orozco is known as one of the "Big Three" muralists along with Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros.
All three artists, as well as the painter Rufino Tamayo, experimented with fresco on large walls, and elevated the art of the mural.
Between 1922–1924, Orozco painted the murals: "The Elements", "Man in Battle Against Nature", "Christ Destroys His Cross", "Destruction of the Old Order", "The Aristocrats", and "The Trench and the Trinity" at the National Preparatory School.
In 1925, he painted the mural "Omniscience" at Mexico City's House of Tiles.
In 1926, he painted a mural at the Industrial School in Orizaba, Veracruz.
Between 1927–1934 Orozco lived in the USA.
Even after the fall of the stock market in 1929, his works were still in demand.
From March to June 1930, at the invitation of the Pomona College Art Department, he painted what he noted was the "first fresco painted outside the country by a painter of the Contemporary Mexican School."
The fresco, "Prometheus" (Prometeo del Pomona College), on the wall of an undergraduate dining hall, was direct and personal at a time when murals were expected to be decorous and decorative, and has been called the first "modern" fresco in the United States.
Later that year, he painted murals at the New School for Social Research, New York City, now known as the New School University.
One of his most famous murals is "The Epic of American Civilization" at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, USA.
It was painted between 1932 and 1934 and covers almost 300 m² (3200 square feet) in 24 panels.
Its parts include: "Migrations", "Human Sacrifices", "The Appearance of Quetzalcoatl", "Corn Culture", "Anglo-America", "Hispano-America", "Science" and "Modern Migration of the Spirit" (another version of "Christ Destroys His Cross").
After returning to Mexico in 1935, Orozco painted in Guadalajara, Jalisco, the mural "The People and Its Leaders" in the Government Palace, and the frescos for the Hospicio Cabañas, which are considered his masterpiece.
In 1940 he painted at the Gabino Ortiz Library in Jiquilpan, Michoacán.
Between 1942–1944 Orozco painted for the Hospital de Jesús in Mexico City.
Orozco's 1948 "Juárez Reborn" huge portrait-mural was one of his last works.
In 1947, Orozco illustrated the book "The Pearl", by John Steinbeck.
Orozco died in 1949 in Mexico City.