An exciting aspect of living in San Miguel is discovering, nearly daily, new mural projects all around town from a city with a long history of supporting public art! From the time of cave art to today, the area now known as San Miguel de Allende has supported art for public consumption or what is now known as murals or street/public art.
Being the longest running mural tour guide and author of several best-selling books on San Miguel with chapters on murals, I know our public art and here is a brief overview of San Miguel’s murals and current trends.
City-wide the most popular murals are to the town’s androgynous namesake, St. Michael, or the Mother of Mexico, the Virgin of Guadalupe. Often buildings feature both making faith-based art our largest category of murals.
Historical murals, being a great teaching tool, are found at schools featuring their namesake plus Independence heroes like Ignacio Allende, Josefa and Fr. Hidalgo. Historical murals make up our second largest category of public art.
Natural themes featuring flora, fauna, and flowers are our third category of murals. Nature, history and faith – the triple play of culture prevails in our murals.
Sometimes you’ll run into the more, well, trippy art reminiscent of peyote laced visions. This is the least popular category and they don’t tend to last long (not that any mural does, like flowers, they are ethereal by their very nature). As one resident explained to me, “Most of Guadalupe’s murals are what foreigners think Mexico is, rather than what Mexicans know Mexico is.” There’s the reason residents, artists and the government all worked together last year to improve Guadalupe’s murals to the benefit of all.
Recently I met a young muralist, David Lopez Coronado, who is a rarity in that he creates art based on all three, history, faith and nature, and is working throughout these troubling times. Normally you can see David’s innovative work in our Art in the Park program in Parque Juarez each weekend, but for now he’s doing more commission based work in homes and businesses.
His most recent creation was a mural for a local hotel featuring notable folks in our history like Guadalupe, Fr. Hidalgo and Frida.
David started his career in his hometown’s (San Luis Potosi’s ) criminal justice system but the call of the muses became too great to ignore. Today David is painting all over San Miguel.
David is but one of many quality artists around town for those looking to have spent quarantine days promoting art, improving their home’s or business’ aesthetics and meeting some great folks along the way. He can be reached on FaceBook under David Lopez Coronado.
Part of what I enjoy so much about walking around town is that streets are constantly adding murals in every neighborhood. How lucky are we to have forever changing art on display!?!
by Joseph Toone
- TripAdvisor’s top tour guide in San Miguel de Allende with History and Culture Walking Tours and Joseph Toone Tours.
- Amazon’s best selling author of the San Miguel de Allende’s Secrets book series on making your adventures around town unique.
- Creator of the Maria Dolls coloring book helping indigenous doll makers.
