
Taxi Drivers against the Gold Shirts
<p>Zalce’s surrealistic image dramatizes the struggle between the political left and right in Mexico as well as, more symbolically, the clash between modernity and the past. Based on a well-known press photograph, it depicts an altercation in Mexico City’s main square in November 1935 in which the cab drivers’ union disrupted a mounted demonstration by the reactionary paramilitary group Acción Revolucionaria Mexicanista (the so-called Gold Shirts).</p> <p><strong>Español:</strong><br>La surreal imagen de Zalce es una dramatización de las luchas entre la izquierda y la derecha mexicanas así como, de manera más simbólica, del enfrentamiento entre la modernidad y el pasado. Basada en una conocida fotografía publicada en la prensa, en ella se muestra un altercado en el Zócalo de la Ciudad de México, ocurrido en noviembre de 1935, en el que el sindicato de taxistas interrumpió una manifestación a caballo del grupo paramilitar reaccionario Acción Revolucionaria Mexicanista (los llamados Camisas Doradas).</p>
Catalogue
- Year
- 1940
- Dimensions
- Image: 25.5 × 32 cm (10 1/16 × 12 5/8 in.); Sheet: 44.1 × 50 cm (17 3/8 × 19 11/16 in.)
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Artist
- Alfredo Zalce
Artist

Printmaking
Alfredo Zalce was a Mexican painter and printmaker active from the 1930s onward, working in a figurative style grounded in social realism and Mexican political art. His practice encompassed mural painting, easel works, and woodcuts that engaged with themes of labor, indigenous culture, and national identity. Zalce remained committed to accessible, publicly oriented forms throughout a long career spanning the postwar period and beyond.
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More by Alfredo Zalce
Fish Market (Pescadería) from AGPA 73: Pan American Graphic Arts (AGPA 73: Artes gráficas panamericanas)
1973 · Linoleum cut from a portfolio of 11 screenprints (one with embossing), seven etchings (three with aquatint, one with embossing), six lithographs (one with etching), five linoleum cuts (one with embossing), one engraving, and one intaglio with embossing
Posada and his Skeletons
1948 · Woodcut
Woman and Child
1947 · Etching on paper
Hammock
1947 · Etching on cream wove paper
Prologue Page, from Estampas de Yucatán
1946 · Lithograph in black on cream wove paper
Folio cover, from Estampas de Yucatán
1946 · Photo relief with letterpress in black and red on magenta cloth portfolio cover
Record
Verified by WattsOS- Artist
- Alfredo Zalce
- Year
- 1940
- Dimensions
- Image: 25.5 × 32 cm (10 1/16 × 12 5/8 in.); Sheet: 44.1 × 50 cm (17 3/8 × 19 11/16 in.)
- Watts ID
- WW-1940-067410
Source
- Collection
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Source
- aic
- Reference
- View at source
- Status
- verified





