El adios

Date: 1929

Medium: Woodcut

Dimensions (cm.): 11.5 x 9.8

Published edition: Unknown

Contemporary publication: El sembrador (issue unknown).

References: Information to be added

Selected additional references (illustrated): Maples Arce, pl. 4; Reyes Palma 1994, pl. 15

Commentary: In the late 1920s and early 1930s Méndez contributed woodcut illustrations for El sembrador (The Sower) and El maestro rural (The Rural Schoolteacher), publications of the SEP (the Secretariat of Education), directed toward campesinos, urban and rural public schoolteachers and members of the Cultural Missions. El adios (The Farewell), one of Méndez’s illustrations for El sembrador, portrays the relationship between rural and urban worlds. A man in the foreground, dressed in a jacket and trousers, a schoolteacher, waves a handkerchief at a muslin-clad campesino riding on a burro in the distance. Méndez’s composition follows Stridentist conventions. The dramatic slash of the white road, drawn at a tilted angle, the difference in scale between the figures, and the sinuous lines of the man in the foreground are all characteristics of Stridentist graphics. (Deborah Caplow)

Catalogue record number: 388