Instituto Cultural Cabañas. Guadalajara, Mexico.

Instituto Cultural Cabañas. Guadalajara, Mexico.

INSTITUTO CULTURAL CABAÑAS (1866)

This long, low-slung building is considered (Patrimony of Humankind. U.N.E.S.C.O.) to be one of the country’s finest examples of neo-classical architecture. The entrance is marked by a portico flanked by Doric columns, and inside, labyrinthine passageways connect twenty-three patios and over a hundred rooms, including concert halls of extraordinary beauty.
The Cabañas Institute was named for a bishop who funded and promoted its construction. For 170 years the building functioned mainly as an orphanage. In 1983 the orphanage was relocated, and a painstaking restoration commenced. The facilities modified to become a forum for art, music, dance, film and cultural education. Yet the institute is best known for a chapel where in 1938, Jalisco-born revolutionary murals, José Clemente Orozco created his masterwork.

The frescoes, so complex that a full explanation (speculative but interesting) requires some two hours time, change form and perspective according to where the viewer stands. Always the eye is drawn upward the cupola, beneath which Orozco, half blind, with one good arm, struggled to produce the deceptively simple, “Man of Fire” man purifying himself, converting himself into pure energy, humanity consuming itself in aspiration to self-fulfillment. Or perhaps the allegory is religious or nihilist… Or not an allegory at all, but the expression of a monumental cynicism!