Tzompantli, by Gustavo Monroy, embraces those killed by violence in the country.

▲ Fragments of the Tzompantli mural, inspired by the structure on which the Mexica mounted a set of skulls to honor the gods. Photo courtesy of the CSI

Merry MacMasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Friday, October 17, 2025, p. 4

Painter Gustavo Monroy (Mexico City, 1959) will be the second artist to participate in the Colegio de San Ildefonso (CSI) project, which consists of temporarily exhibiting contemporary murals that engage with the school's artistic legacy. The first was painter and sculptor Alberto Castro Leñero, whose mural "Displacement" was exhibited from March 29 to September 28. It will now tour to the Museo Vivo del Mural (Living Museum of Murals).

Tzompantli is the name of the mural that Monroy will exhibit starting tomorrow and continuing through April 19, 2026, in the first-floor corridor of the CSI, next to the fresco Law and Justice (1923-1924) by José Clemente Orozco. Inspired by the structure on which the Mexica mounted a set of skulls to honor the gods, it constructs a discourse around the anonymous victims of current social conflicts.

The work was born at the beginning of the pandemic, during lockdown, "when I made a series of drawings I called Pandemic Drawings," Monroy says. The discovery during the health crisis of another section of the Huey Tzompantli, or Great Tzompantli of Mexico-Tenochtitlan, found in 2015 in the Templo Mayor, prompted the artist to begin the Covid Tzompantli, " because during the pandemic, we were in a state of permanent mourning, not only in Mexico, but throughout the world."

That first Monroy tzompantli measured 7 meters long and was exhibited at the Clavijero Cultural Center in Morelia. However, when Eduardo Vázquez Martín, head of the CSI, "invited me to participate in this project, I decided to update it. It's no longer the Covid Tzompantli, but rather a piece that embraces the disappeared, (the victims of) femicides, the dead, and general violence. Furthermore, I integrate it somewhat into the concept (handled at the Templo Mayor) and pre-Hispanic figures, such as the serpent, which is a symbol of fertility; I work on it as archaeological layers that go from the original Tzompantli to our time."

She adds: “I use certain symbolism that provides indicators through cross-sections up to the present day. That's why I integrate the pink cross and the serpent heads displayed in the Templo Mayor, which the public can see before entering the CSI, and then observe them in the mural. I also use them as a symbol of fertility, since bodies travel through serpents in this cycle of death and life in pre-Hispanic cosmogony.” For the CSI, the work grew to 3.10 by 11 meters.

This is Monroy's first mural, conceived as such, although it's not painted on a wall. Fifteen years ago, he participated in the Akaso project by the collector Sergio Autrey, inspired by the Osaka project, promoted in 1970 by Fernando Gamboa. "They were only large paintings," he clarifies. "In San Ildefonso, I do establish a direct dialogue with José Clemente Orozco. The palette, the concept, and certain architectural elements I work with are directly related to his murals."

He never imagined exhibiting at San Ildefonso; however, Orozco has always been part of Monroy's references: “In recent years, I've worked with references to artists from the history of universal and Mexican painting. I've been working for a long time with Manuel Rodríguez Lozano and Francisco Goitia, and at the same time with Masaccio and the Italian Quattrocento , as a kind of paraphrase. My work is a constant reference to art history. They are reinterpretations to decontextualize and recontextualize them in our present. Precisely because I feel that painting is still alive, telling me things, just as Orozco is still alive in his murals. And, not only that, modern.”

The Tzompantli mural will be inaugurated tomorrow at 1 p.m. at the Colegio de San Ildefonso (Justo Sierra 16, Historic Center).