José Clemente Orozco, Zapatistas, 1931

Narrator: Here, José Clemente Orozco depicts the sort of scene he might have witnessed working as a cartoonist during the Mexican Revolution. A group of campesinos—impoverished farmers, male and female—march across the canvas. The men’s white sombreros identify them as Zapatistas, followers of Emiliano Zapata. Zapata was an agrarian leader and revolutionary hero who was assassinated near the end of the war. After the revolution, many artists idealized him and his fight for land reform. 

Barbara Haskell: Orozco was very different. 

Narrator: Curator Barbara Haskell is one of the organizers of this exhibition.

Barbara Haskell: Orozco had actually seen the war up front; he was a cartoonist during the revolution, so he witnessed the brutality. And he didn't have any sense of the heroism of the revolution, because he'd seen the oppression and the bestiality, and the egotism of the revolution.

He saw the reality of the revolution on people, on the women, on the families, and on the soldiers. He portrays them not in this heroic victory of battle but trudging along. And also the difference between the leaders that are on horseback who aren't so tired, and the contrast between that and these peasants that are fighting for land, but who are the instruments of some other person’s vision.