‘Flower Vendors’ mural and its artist get fresh look at Scripps College

Two Mexican muralists produced work at the Claremont Colleges in the middle years of the 20th century, yet the results couldn’t be more different.

Over at Pomona College’s Frary Dining Hall, students eat under José Clemente Orozco’s “Prometheus,” in which a nude male deity attempts to steal fire from Mount Olympus , straining at the borders of the violent image as onlookers react.

Blocks away at Scripps College’s Margaret Fowler Garden is a quieter masterpiece.

In “The Flower Vendors,” women, solo or in small groups, carry flowers on their way to the marketplace. At work, their expressions are serene, dignified.

Alfredo Ramos Martínez painted “The Flower Vendors” in 1946. That March, with one assistant, he began work on the 100-foot-long mural, composed of multiple panels. That Nove