Zapata

1930

José Clemente Orozco
Mexican, 1883–1949

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 Zapata in California.

Status: On View, Gallery 263
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: José Clemente Orozco
Title: Zapata
Place: Mexico (Artist's nationality:)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: 1930
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed lower left: J. C. Orozco Inscribed lower left: S. F. JULIO, 1930
Dimensions: 198.8 × 122.6 cm (78 1/4 × 48 1/4 in.)
Credit Line: Gift of Joseph Winterbotham Collection
Reference Number: 1941.35
Copyright: © 2018 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / SOMAAP, Mexico City

José Clemente Orozco, introduction by Alma Reed (New York: Delphic Studios, 1932), ill. n.pag.
“Modern Art: 1821–1940; Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art,” Bulletin of the Museum of Modern Art, 7, 2–3 (May 1940), 11.
Frederick A. Sweet, “The Leader, Zapata,” Bulletin of the Art Institute of Chicago 35, 6 (November 1941), 90–91, ill. p. 89.
Fernando Gamboa, José Clemente Orozco (Mexico: Ediciones de Arte, 1948), ill. p. 25.
Justino Fernandez, “Orozco’s Zapata.” Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly, 45, 4, (November 15, 1951), 62–65.
MacKinley Helm, Man of Fire: J. C. Orozco: An Interpretative Memoir (Boston Institute of Contemporary Art/Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953), ill. p. 149, pl. 15.
Alma Reed, Orozco (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 192–94, 198, 200, 201–02.
Art Institute of Chicago, Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago: A Catalogue of the Picture Collection (Art Institute of Chicago, 1961), 346–47, ill. p. 472.
José Clemente Orozco, An Autobiography, trans. by Robert C. Stephenson, intro. by John Palmer Leeper (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1962), 139–140.
John Hutton, “‘If I am to die tomorrow’––Roots and Meanings of Orozco’s Zapata Entering a Peasant’s Hut,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 11, 1 (Fall 1984), 38–51, ill.
Laurance P. Hurlburt, The Mexican Muralists in the United States (University of New Mexico Press, 1989), 42, 266 n. 85.
Art Institute of Chicago, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth–Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), 65, ill.
Victoria Price, Vincent Price: A Daughter’s Biography (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999), 83–84.
Judith A. Barter, et al., American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955 (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), cat. 77. 85.
Sarah Kelly Oehler, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago, 2013), 54–57, cat. 41 (ill.).
Paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago: Highlights of the Collection, (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2017) p. 115.

New York, American Federation of Arts (organizer), Mexican Arts, cat. 412, exhibited at Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oct. 13–Nov. 9, 1930, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Nov. 25–Dec. 16, 1930, Pittsburgh, Carnegie Institute, Jan. 7–Feb. 4, 1931, Cleveland Museum of Art, Feb. 18–Mar. 11, 1931, Washington, Corcoran Gallery, Apr. 1–22, 1931, Milwaukee Art Institute, May 13–June 3, 1931, Louisville, J.B. Speed Memorial Museum, June 24–July 15, 1931, and San Antonio, Pan–American Round Table, Aug. 12–Sept. 2, 1931.
New York, Delphic Studios and Alma Reed (organizer), Exhibition of Lithographs, Mural Studies, Photographs of Frescoes, Paintings, Drawings by José Clemente Orozco, cat. 23, exhibited at La Porte, Indiana, Civic Auditorium, Apr. 6–29, 1934.
Chicago, Arts Club of Chicago, Exhibition of Paintings by José Clemente Orozco, May 23–June 15, 1934, cat. 10.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Modern Works of Art; Fifth Anniversary Edition, Nov. 20, 1934–Jan. 20, 1935, cat. 121, ill.
Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Institute, The 1935 International Exhibition of Paintings, Oct. 7–Dec. 8, 1935, cat. 241, pl. 30.
New York, Hudson D. Walker Gallery, J. C. Orozco: Paintings and Drawings, Oct. 2–21, 1939, cat. 11.
New York, Museum of Modern Art, Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, Feb–Nov. 1940, no cat.
Washington, DC, Pan American Union, Contemporary Art in Latin America, Apr. 1942, n.pag., ill.
Rocky Mountain Council on Inter–American Affairs (organizer), Exhibition [Contemporary Latin American Painters], exhibited in Fort Collins, Colo., Colorado State University, Mar. 6–24, 1943, no cat. located.
Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, The Winterbotham Collection, 1947, pp. 6, 32–33.
Chicago, Renaissance Society of the University of Chicago, José Clemente Orozco, 1883–1949, Apr. 2–30, 1951, cat. 6.
Mexican government (organizer), exhibited in Paris, Musée national d’art moderne, under Art Mexicain du précolumbien a nos jours, May–July 1952, cat. 968, pl. 88, as Le Caudillo Zapata; Stockholm, Sweden, Liljevalchs Konsthall, under Mexikansk Konst från forntid till nutid, Oct. 1952, cat. 953, pl. 52, as Hövdingen Zapata; and London, Tate Gallery, under Exhibition of Mexican Art from Pre–Columbian Times to the Present Day, Mar. 4 to Apr. 26, 1953, cat. 968, pl. 55 (in supplement), as The Caudillo (Leader) Zapata.
Pittsburgh, Pa., Carnegie Institute, Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings from Previous Internationals, 1896–1955, Dec. 5, 1958–Feb. 8, 1959, cat. 65.
Chicago, Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, Mexicanidad: Our Past Is Present, Apr. 27, 2001–May 5, 2002, no cat.
Art Institute of Chicago, They Seek a City: Chicago and the Art of Migration, 1910–1950, Mar. 3–Jun. 2, 2013, cat. 41.

José Clemente Orozco; sold to Alma Reed/Delphic Studios, New York, by Oct. 1930 [exh. in American Federation of Art, Mexican Arts, 1930]; sold to Vincent Price, Hollywood, CA, in 1938 [letter from Price in file]; sold to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1941.

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