Agrarian Leader Zapata
Emiliano Zapata, a champion of agrarian reform and a key protagonist in the Mexican Revolution, here leads a band of peasant rebels armed with makeshift weapons, including farming tools. With the bridle of a majestic white horse in his hand, Zapata stands triumphantly beside the dead body of a hacienda owner. Though Mexican and U.S. newspapers regularly vilified the revolutionary leader as a treacherous bandit, Rivera immortalized Zapata as a hero and glorified the victory of the Revolution in an image of violent but just vengeance.
The surface of a fresco panel dries quickly, so the artist must have a clear vision of his or her composition before applying pigment to the wet plaster. Rivera developed his images on paper, then transferred them to or replicated them on the mural’s surface. He pinned precisely scaled cartoons, like this study, near his fresco panels to help determine the exact proportions of the final work. Here, bold strokes contrast with quick, sketch-like marks to create an image that corresponds to the finished fresco with great accuracy.
Recent X-rays of Agrarian Leader Zapata reveal the internal skeleton of one of Rivera’s portable murals for the first time. A metal armature composed of horizontal and diagonal bars, iron mesh, and a rigid steel outer frame provides a torque-resistant support for multiple layers of cement and fresco mortar. This framework allowed Rivera to free his murals from the wall, but it certainly did not make them easy to move, with the largest weighing nearly a thousand pounds.
Because of the time it took to prepare fresco panels for painting, Rivera needed to set preparations in motion in advance of his arrival in New York, just six weeks before the opening of his exhibition. His assistants coordinated the fabrication of sturdy, slab-like backings for the fresco mortar—metal structures covered with cement. On the reverse side of Agrarian Leader Zapata, the arcing gestures used to trowel on the cement are in evidence, moving from right to left and top to bottom. The diamond shape and horizontal lines visible through the rough surface trace the panel’s inner metal framework.