Zapata (1932) is a lithograph by the Mexican artist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) that depicts the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata (1879–1919) as he holds the reins of a horse among a group of campesinos (peasants). The lithographic edition was created and printed twelve years after Zapata's assassination. Zapata is based on Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), one of eight "portable" frescoes produced explicitly for Rivera's solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1931, which was adapted from his previous Revolt panel from a fresco titled The History of Cuernavaca and Morelos (1929–30) painted in the Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca. There were 100 original prints of the lithograph, many of which are in the collections of various art museums.
Context
In 1930, with his popularity on the rise with American audiences, Diego Rivera began to make lithographic prints for the American art market at the request of his gallerist, Carl Zigrosser, director of the Weyhe Gallery in New York, and Rivera's friend William Spratling. Rivera quickly adapted to the medium, admitting to Zigrosser that he had been seduced by the direct contact of the lithographic crayon to the stone's surface.
In 1931 Diego Rivera became the second artist ever to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, following Henri Matisse’s solo exhibition earlier that year. Rivera's exhibition was described as a "media event" and broke all museum attendance records at the time, drawing 56,575 attendees—more than double the attendance of the Mattisse show. 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. The murals proved portable in name only: each panel, constructed of concrete poured over an armature of iron and steel, weighed nearly 1,000 pounds. To disseminate the mural images more widely, Rivera and Zigrosser elected to reproduce them as lithographs, which were affordable and accessible. This lithograph, along with four others, was created at the George C. Miller Print Shop in New York and published in 1932 by the Weyhe Gallery in New York. Rivera redrew the images for the prints himself and remained in New York after the MoMA exhibition to oversee their production.
That Rivera was urged to create these lithographs speaks to his popularity as a celebrated Mexican artist in the United States. 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."
Description
Emiliano Zapata stands in the foreground. In his left hand, he holds the bridle of a white horse 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) whose gloved hand rests upon Zapata's left foot. The fallen man wears dark clothing and riding boots; a cutlass lies on the ground beside him. 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 and two others are seen to wear huaraches (sandals), while the others go barefoot. Several wear sombreros (wide-brimmed hats). Broad-leaved plants—likely Calla lilies, which Rivera used extensively in his work—frame the scene on the right side of the print. The background is a vague and natural environment, as observed by Oles, to emphasize the popular culture and idealization of folkways of Mexico rather than its monuments.