No painter could ever claim a more fiery passion than Mexico's Gerardo Murillo. He loved volcanoes. He lived four months on the slopes of Mount Etna, spent six months inside Popoca tepetl's crater, and bought Paricutin volcano for $78 when it was a baby in 1943. He so mistreated his body that his teeth fell out from sulphur fumes and a leg was amputated because of bad circulation. He called himself "Dr. Atl" (Aztec for water), and signed that name to more than 11,000 drawings and 1,000 paintings, mostly volcanic landscapes.
At the turn of the century, storming the European art scene, Dr. Atl talked anarchism in Barcelona cafés, argued with Lenin in Lausanne, published an anticlerical newspaper with a young socialist named Benito Mussolini. When the fire of Mexico's revolution was lit in 1911, Dr. Atl returned home to kindle his country's intellectuals. Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros caught the blaze from him. Dr. Atl became Mexico's Fine Arts Minister, promptly shut down the Fine Arts Academy as too traditional. The plutonic painter, more than anyone, pointed Mexican art toward its folklore, its social fervor and its peppery expressionism.
Later, Dr. Atl became dismayed at the leftist tack that the artists he had encouraged were taking. As for himself, he preferred fascism, publishing almost daily newspaper articles during World War II in praise of it. Politics finally palled, and the old man returned to his volcanoes. Last week Dr. Atl's fire finally went out at the age of 89. President Lopez Mateos ordered his burial in Mexico's pantheon of famous men.