Profesor Ramón Orta del Río
Date: 1939
Medium: Lithograph
Dimensions (cm.): 29.6 x 19.9
Alternate titles: Unknown
Published edition:
In portfolio En nombre de Cristo... han asesinado más de 200 maestros. Editorial Gráfica Popular, Mexico City, 1939
Unknown number of impressions outside the edition printed on loose sheets.
Contemporary publication: see published edition, above
References: Prignitz 394
Commentary: The text that accompanies this image states that Profesor Ramón Orta del Rîo was one of three murdered schoolteachers in the state of Nayarit, and that the judicial authorities had remained passive in the case in spite of the pleas of the magistrate. As in Profesor Ildefonso Vargas, Méndez’s composition presents the victim greatly foreshortened, almost falling out of the pictorial space toward the viewer. The flames that surround him consume his books and papers, as well as his body, with its bound wrists. Eerily suggestive of the book burnings and other atrocities of Nazi Germany, it is also similar to many of Orozco’s prints and paintings of the Mexican Revolution, which also contain images of fire and destruction. (Deborah Caplow)
Catalogue record number: 244
