Jose Clemente Orozco was born on November 23, 1883 in Ciudad Guzman, Jalisco, Mexico. Orozco's giant murals made him the most powerful of Mexico's Big Three, which included Diego Rivera and David Siqueiros. Orozco's work caught the spirit of Mexico, bloodied and in ruins, emerging from many years of brutal class warfare. He was controversial, considered cold and unemotional, fascist, (he wore a swastika in his buttonhole and admired Hitler), hating anything religious. Yet his wife insisted he was a loving family man.

One of his most famous murals was at Dartmouth College, a commission that he received at the recommendation of Nelson Rockefeller. He needed assistance to prepare the walls because he had lost his left hand in a childho...