Pablo O’Higgins began receiving his artistic training at the School of Fine Arts in San Diego, but at the age of 20 moved to Mexico, acting on his affinity with the revolutionary Mexican artists. He particularly admired the work of the Mexican muralists Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, and David Alfaro Siquerios; in fact, O’Higgins secured a position as a primary assistant to Rivera, who would become a lifetime friend and a mentor. His style became deeply influenced by the muralists’ dramatic and monumental realism, which he adopted in depicting images of labor and local inhabitants. O’Higgins also became politically active in the post-revolution art movement in Mexico. He was the only non-native to be included in the historic 1940 exhibition at the New York Museum of Modern Art, “Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art.”