The History of Wall Murals
- The very first recorded murals were found in the caves of Lascaux in southern France and in Alamira, Spain. They have been dated to 17,000 BC. The murals are relatively simple, depicting bulls and other animals. The scale of the images were quite large, like murals today, with one bull being 17 feet wide. Murals can also be found in the Far East dating back to 1700 B.C. in China, Korea and Japan. There are also Buddhist murals in Ajanta, India dated at about 200 BC.
- During the Middle Ages, churches where heavily adorned with wall murals. Around the 4th century, mosaics were used in place of fresco paintings, but the fine art of wall painting returned during the 14th century. Mural painting waned again around the 16th century when stained glass and fabrics became the principal decoration on church walls.
- In the 17th century, murals were commissioned from master artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Francisco Goya. These murals were painted in secular buildings, generally on canvas then affixed to the ceiling or wall. During this period, the Roman Catholic church commissioned thousands of murals with themes such as the Assumption of the Virgin Mary and the Betrayal of Jesus.
- In the 1920s, three Mexican artists led a revival of mural art. They are Diego Rivera, Jose Clementa Orozco, and David Alfaro Siqueios. American artists Thomas Hart Benton, and John Steuart Cury worked to paint murals in post offices, court houses and other public buildings.
- Before the 1960s, murals were largely found indoors, such as the painting by Marc Chagal at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. Murals painted indoors were protected from the elements and more likely to stand the test of time. Around this time, outdoor murals also began to crop up in large cities, done by individual artists or in group projects. One of the most famous outdoor mural artists in the modern period was pop artist Keith Harding who died in 1990 at the age of 31. Today, due to the abundance of artists and relatively low cost of murals, they can be found on the outside of many large buildings. They are commissioned by private individuals for office spaces and even for homes. You can find professional mural artists who charge thousands of dollars to paint a single wall and amateur mural artists who will paint an entire room for just a few hundred dollars.
