The Mexican Mural Movement was Mexican painting movement that developed from the 1920s to the 1950s. Its most well-known painters were Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. Each of these men were heavily influenced by Marxism and a sense of Mexican nationalism, which made them want to paint historical, indigenous, and agricultural scenes. Most of the muralists were often skirting trouble with the changing governments in Mexico, finding their support fluctuating throughout their careers.

The Academy of San Carlos was established by the Spanish crown and staffed with an all-Spanish cast of instructors in order to better control the artistic expression of the colonials, and the messages they were potentially spreading to one another about ideas that the Spanish Crown considered "dangerous." After all, the Spanish colonies of the Americas were growing increasingly culturally independent.

Although there were paintings done by indigenous artists in New Spain, the artists are unknown. Therefore, the first known artists are those who relocated to New Spain as adults, during their artistic careers. Some of these painters were religious figureheads, but they were Catholic, not Protestant.

Only a handful of ancient Mayan murals survive to the present day, but they all are massive plaster frescos usually found in archaeological sites. The giant murals at Bonakmal depict the court life of an ancient Mayan king in great detail. The paintings were done quite quickly, as they had to be completed before the plaster dried.

Pre-Columbian societies often did not have a system of writing, so for much of their histories, the visual arts was their primary source of communication and record keeping, along with word-of-mouth record-keeping and day-to-day verbal conversation.

The early art of the colonial Americas (namely Mexico) was derived from the European artistic principles that the Spanish brought with them to New Spain (what is now Mexico). When the native settlers of New Spain began to paint using such European principles, they also added details that they could relate to, such as crops native to the Americas, or imagery from the folklore of their culture. These additions gave their paintings a unique indigenous appearance.

Mexican painters were trained using imported European copies and engravings of popular paintings and other works. Therefore, by the time they mastered the techniques they were studying from the engravings and copies, the trends featured had already gone out of style.

The Casta was a system of racial hierarchy used in New Spain and also in the Philippines during and after the Inquisition, based on perceived blood purity. It was determined by birth. Those with darker features had fewer opportunities, as did their children after them.

The Casta system of the Spanish colonies of the Americas neither encouraged nor discouraged the mixing of races, it was simply a hierarchy of races, in which white Europeans had more opportunities and rights than their dark-skinned, indigenous counterparts. This system was the subject of much colonial artwork, as many artists were commissioned to illustrate the different races and the classification of their offspring. The title of the painting, De español y mulata, morisca, translates to English as, "From Spanish and mulatto, comes morisco." This means that the child of pure Spanish blood and mulatto blood (mixed race), would be classified as a morisco.

Image from Wikipedia Media Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mestizo._Mestiza._Mestiza.jpg

Hide paintings and oral stories were used by indigenous Native Americans to record their history, as they did not have access to the printing press until after the arrival of European invaders.