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Zapata (lithograph)

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Zapata
Alternate Titles “Zapata and His Horse” “Agrarian Leader Zapata’’
ArtistDiego Rivera
TypeLithograph
Dimensions (Image: 13 ⅛ inches, Sheet: 14 inches in × Image: 16 ¼ inches, Sheet: 17 1/16 inches in)
LocationUniversity of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson, Arizona

Zapata (1932) is a lithograph by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (b. 1886, d.1957) that depicts the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata (b.1879 d.1919) holding the reins of a horse among a group of campesinos (peasants). The lithographic edition was created and printed twelve years after Zapata's assassination. This lithograph is in the University of Arizona Museum of Art permanent collection [1] and is number 9 of an edition of 100. Zapata is based on Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), one of eight “portable” frescoes produced explicitly for his solo exhibition at MoMA in 1931, which was adapted from the Revolt panel of a fresco by Rivera titled The History of Cuernavaca and Morelos (1929–30) painted in the Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca. [2]

Context

Due to its inexpensive production techniques, printmaking became the ideal way for revolutionaries to distribute and disseminate information amongst the populous during the Mexican Revolution (1910-20). In addition to the many collectives that formed in Mexco and expanded into the 1930s to support revolutionary movements, Rivera and other Mexican artists quickly adopted printmaking into their artistic production. Paradoxically, Rivera began to make lithographic prints as per the request Carl Zigrosser and William Spratling, both of whom knew that due to Rivera's sudden American popularity, the prints would be an easily sold commodity. Rivera admitted to Zigrosser that he had been seduced by the direct contact of the lithographic crayon to the stone's surface, hence his output of lithographs in the early 1930s. [3]

In 1931, Diego Rivera became the second artist ever to hold a solo exhibition at the MoMA. For this exhibition, Rivera created several portable murals, based on details of his murals in Mexico, for the purpose of connecting public American interest in his work with the original frescoes. Following this exhibit, Rivera remained in New York for several months. Though the exhibit murals are, by definition, portable, they proved difficult to move. To counteract this limited accessibility, Rivera and Zigrosser elected to print the murals as lithographs, which are affordable, accessible, and maintain the hand of the artist in reproduction.[4] Zapata was created in 1932 after the conclusion of Rivera’s solo show at the Museum of Modern Art. This lithograph, along with four others, was created at the George C. Miller Print Shop in New York and published at the Weyhe Gallery in New York.[5] Rivera was urged to create these lithographs, thus speaking to his popularity as a celebrated Mexican artist in the United States.[6]

This lithograph belongs to Rivera's second group of prints produced for the Weyhe Gallery and was printed in New York by George Miller. Each lithograph is based on a detail or a variation of an image from one of his murals. Zapata, the fifth of this series of five, is Rivera's best known and most-admired print. As Lyle Williams points out, "Diego Rivera's lithograph Zapata, 1932, is one of the seminal images of twentieth century printmaking, a landmark in the history not only of Mexican Art but of modern art." [7]

Description

Emiliano Zapata stands in the foreground, oriented to the left of the image and his body facing forward with his feet spread apart. In his left hand Zapata holds the bridle of a white horse,[8] and in his right he wields a sickle used for cutting sugarcane, the staple hacienda product of Zapata’s home state of Morelos. Zapata and the horse stand above the prone figure of a hacendado (hacienda owner). The fallen man wears dark clothing and riding boots with a cutlass lying beside him. His gloved hand rests upon Zapata’s left foot. Behind Zapata stands a group of seven peasants armed with farming implements: one carries a sickle, another a bow and arrows, and two carry coas de jima, hoe-like tools with round blades used for harvesting agave. Both Zapata and his followers wear white peasant clothing typical of the Cuernavaca region of Mexico. Zapata carries a simple satchel and wears sandals. Two followers visibly wear sandals as well, while the others go barefoot. Several of his followers also wear sombreros. Broad-leaved plants—likely Calla lilies, which Rivera used extensively in his work—frame the scene on the right side of the print.

Style

This lithograph is characterized by smooth, curvilinear forms whose volumes are rendered with the even gradients of tone typical of Rivera's style. Rivera achieved the varied tones within the print by shading and crosshatching with lithographic crayon. Rivera used tonal variations in the black and white Zapata to similar effect as he did color in the painted murals he used as its source material. In the lithograph, the lightest areas in Zapata's white clothing and the white body of the horse he leads are sharply delineated against the dark background and the mid tones of the clothing of Zapata's followers. This contrast draws the viewer's attention to the figures of the rebel leader and the horse and establishes their preeminence within the composition. In his mural, Agrarian Leader Zapata, one of the sources for the lithograph, Rivera accentuated the two figures by leaving the fresco's brilliant white plaster undercoat exposed.[9]

Rivera’s print shows parallels with Paolo Uccello’s early fifteenth-century painting The Battle of San Romano (c. 1438).[10] Both works depict a white horse similar in size to the human figures pictured, figures bristling with armaments receding into the background, and weapons underfoot in the foreground. Rivera did in fact make numerous sketches of Uccello's horses during a trip to Italy in 1920-21.[11]

In both its representational quality and its overtly political message, Zapata is typical of Social Realism, an international art movement that aimed to create art that would empower the working class.[12]

Other Representations of Zapata by Rivera

Previous to the mural at the Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca and its subsequent depiction in the Zapata MoMA mural and lithograph, Rivera's 1930-1931 painting Zapata depicted the figure based on a photograph showing him in Cuernavaca in 1911, in which he brandishes a modern rifle and wears the ornate costume of the charro, or horsemen. However, for the Zapata Palace of Cortes mural, the MoMA mural, and the lithograph, Rivera chose to eliminate the symbolic references to power and status and instead opted to depict Zapata as a campesino. The simple dress separated him from the ruling elite and characterized him as a folk hero.[13] This further idealized the figure following his assassination in 1919.[14]

It was clear to Rivera that there were two ways of seeing Zapata; one as the idealized charro revolutionary and one as the leader of the campesino movement. Both Rivera's lithograph and paintings of Zapata denote that Rivera was careful to choose the way in which he represented Zapata.

Another Mexican artist, José Clemente Orozco "scorned this type of imagery as romanticizing poverty and backwardness; nevertheless, in their very idealization, these images reassured viewers in Mexico and abroad that the peasants behind the Revolution were actually contained and content." [15]

Photographs of Zapata

Prints of Zapata made before 1932

Editions

Single edition: 100 prints plus artist proofs and cancellation proof. Printed by George C. Miller, New York. Published by Weyhe Gallery, New York in 1932.

Collections

Museums and institutions that have the lithograph in their permanent collection. In addition to prints listed below, the Dolores Olmedo Museum is home to print 92/100.

Title Collection/Credit line Print # Institution
Zapata Gift of Karl Zigrosser -/100 Philadelphia Museum of Art[16]
Zapata Gift of W. G. Russell Allen 4/100 Museum of Fine Arts Boston[17]
Zapata Edward J. Gallagher, Jr. Memorial Fund 9/100 University of Arizona Museum of Art[18]
Zapata The Harris Brisbane Dick Fund 88/100 The Metropolitan Museum Of Art[19]
Zapata and His Men (Zapata y sus hombres) Gift of Mr. J. J. Cohn (M.61.43.1) 91/100 LACMA[20]
Zapata Print Sales Miscellaneous Fund, 1935.230 96/100 Art Institute Chicago[21]
Zapata Gift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller -/100 Museum of Modern Art[22]

Notes

  1. ^ UAMA link: http://www.artmuseum.arizona.edu
  2. ^ http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80682
  3. ^ Ittmann, John (2006) ‘Diego Rivera’ Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in The Graphic Arts 1920 to 1950
  4. ^ Indych-Lopez, Anna (2009) Muralism Without Walls: Rivera, Orozco, and Siqeuiros in the United States, 1927 p. 151-153.
  5. ^ Ittmann, John (2006) ‘Diego Rivera’ Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in The Graphic Arts 1920 to 1950
  6. ^ Delpar, Helen (1992) The Enormous Vogue of Things Mexican. Cultural Relations between the United States and Mexico, 1920-1955. Tuscaloosa and New York: University of Alabama Press.
  7. ^ Williams, Lyle W. Evolution of a Revolution, a Brief History of Printmaking in Mexico, Ittmann, John (2006) ‘Diego Rivera’ Mexico and Modern Printmaking: A Revolution in The Graphic Arts 1920 to 1950
  8. ^ Schell, William (2009). "Emiliano Zapata and the Old Regime: Myth, Memory, and Method". Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos. 25 (2): 327–365.
  9. ^ Indych-Lopez, Anna. "Agrarian Leader Zapata", Diego Rivera: Murals for the Museum of Modern Art. Museum of Modern Art, 2011, p. 80.
  10. ^ http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/paolo-uccello-the-battle-of-san-romano
  11. ^ Metropolitan Museum of Art "Mexico: Splendors of 30 Centuries"
  12. ^ Cardoza y Aragón, 1986, p. 186.
  13. ^ Dickerman, Leah; Indych-López, Anna ‘’Diego Rivera” Murals for the Museum of Modern Art’’
  14. ^ Oles, James (2011). Mexican Muralists: Diego Rivera,Jose Clemente Orozco,and David Alfaro Siqueiros. The Museum of Modern Art. 19.
  15. ^ Oles, James (2013). Art and Architecture in Mexico: Thames & Hudson.
  16. ^ http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/71018.html
  17. ^ http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/zapata-157503
  18. ^ http://uarizona.pastperfect-online.com/35961cgi/mweb.exe?request=record;id=6C19DFE7-2353-4AF5-8ADD-531312242311;type=101
  19. ^ http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/656904
  20. ^ http://collections.lacma.org/node/233400
  21. ^ http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/111349
  22. ^ http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=77166
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