El imperialismo y la guerra

Date: 1938

Medium: Lithograph with typeset text, printed as a volante (lithograph photomechanically reproduced and printed by offset)

Image: El imperialismo y la guerra

Dimensions (cm.):  18.3 x 14.7 (image);  24.1 x 16.8 (sheet)

Variants: Volante is usually found on orange paper (papel revolución) but impressions exist on off-white paper.

Alternate titles: La máscara

Published edition: This volante, printed on thin colored paper. 

Contemporary publication: This volante. See published edition, above.

References: Exposición de Homenaje 328, Prignitz 236.

Commentary:  The 1938 lithograph, El imperialismo y la guerra (Imperialism and War), designed as a flyer, demonstrates the TGP’s support for President Lázaro Cárdenas. A composite figure, made up of cannons, flags and bayonets, strides like Goya’s Colossus over a burning town, the capitalist’s top hat and the Nazi swastika symbolizing the union of big business and fascism. At the bottom of Méndez’s print, a bayonet-shaped leg pierces a small village, drawn in the style of the towns depicted by Orozco in his prints of the Mexican Revolution, such as his Casas y grupo de mujeres (Houses and Group of Women) (Pueblo mexicano (Mexican Town)), 1930. A pacifist quote from President Cárdenas at the bottom of the image condemns the role of industry and capital in imperialist war: “...to bring to the consciousness of the popular masses, the conviction that the necessary elimination of imperialist wars depends of the solidarity of the workers....”

The print is remarkably similar to a wood engraving by American political cartoonist Thomas Nast, whose works were likely familiar to Méndez. Nast’s 1871 A Group of Vultures Waiting for the Storm to Blow Over satirizes New York’s Boss Tweed and his Tammany Ring, who stole millions of dollars from the public treasury. Images such as these were instrumental in Tweed’s downfall. Like Méndez, Nast used a huddled group of vultures with human heads to represent corruption.  (Deborah Caplow)

Cataloging note: Although some sources give the date 1937, the text is from a speech given by Lázaro Cárdenas on September 1, 1938. 

Catalogue record number: 7a