Zapata

David Alfaro Siqueiros, who considered himself primarily a political activist, was involved in organizing labor unions until 1930, when he was jailed and then confined to the town of Taxco. The fifteen months of internal exile that followed proved artistically fruitful. Siqueiros worked on many easel paintings and prints, including two portraits of Emiliano Zapata: an oil painting and this lithograph. Based on a famous photograph of the agrarian revolutionary leader, Siqueiros’s "Zapata" is as monumental and massive as the mountains that surround him. The lithograph was produced through the Weyhe Gallery in New York, an institution that helped introduce the work of the Mexican muralists to the U.S. public. Zapata remains a resonant figure among revolutionary groups in southern Mexico.