Zapata

José Clemente OrozcoWW-1930-013867

1930·Oil on canvas·198.8 × 122.6 cm (78 1/4 × 48 1/4 in.)

<p>A sense of danger pervades this painting of Emiliano Zapata, the leader of an army of Mexican laborers that fought for liberty and land redistribution for the poor during the early 20th century: bullets are strung across a man’s shoulder, a sword is pointed at another’s eye, and figures kneel in enervated poses. José Clemente Orozco portrayed Zapata silhouetted against a doorway, standing before two other revolutionaries and two grieving figures. For Orozco and other leftist Mexicans, Zapata—assassinated in 1919—became a symbol of the revolution that took place from 1910 to 1920. With its emphasis on violence and suffering, this depiction is ambiguous rather than laudatory. A leader of the Mexican mural movement, Orozco worked in his home country as well as in the United States, painting <em>Zapata</em> in California.</p>

Catalogue

Year: 1930
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 198.8 × 122.6 cm (78 1/4 × 48 1/4 in.)
Collection: Art Institute of Chicago
Artist: José Clemente Orozco

Artist

José Clemente Orozco

Painting

José Clemente Orozco, alongside Diego Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, led the Mexican mural movement that established a powerful new visual vocabulary for post-Civil War Mexico and inspired socially-conscious artists north of the border and across the world. Of these three artists – Los Tres Grandes – whose monumental compositions foregrounded the indigenous warrior and the common laborer, Orozco's approach was the most complex, a hard and unsparing eye cast on the baseness and brutality of all sides of the revolution.

Ciudad Guzmán, Jalisco, Mexico

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