José Verdi. 1813-1901. Homenaje de México en el Cincuentenario de la muerte del Maestro

Date: 1951

Medium: Linocut with typeset text, printed as a poster.

Dimensions (cm.): 43.5 x 58.8 (image); 57.0 x 72.0 (sheet). Dimensions of print, not printed as poster: 42.7 x 57.9

Image: Verdi

 Alternate titles: Unknown

Published edition: This poster, printed on medium-weight coated paper. Number of impressions unknown. 

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

References: Exposición de Homenaje 300.

Commentary:  This magisterial portrait of the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi, though created for an homage to the composer rather that as a film image, is one of Méndez’s most complex and cinematic works, demonstrating his familiarity with European culture and history. Méndez rendered Verdi’s face in fine detail, while behind him scenes from the Italian struggle for independence play out in a mountainous landscape. The revolutionary leader, Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882), mounted on a white horse, leads his men into action in the highlands of Sicily. This print is multi-layered composition. Verdi’s operatic works and his known admiration of the Italian revolutionary overlap with Méndez’s own revolutionary ideals, while the portrayal of Verdi himself, like Méndez’s own self-portrait of 1945, expresses the creative and political dilemma of the artist. Verdi sits in contemplation in front of the scenes behind him, which are both historical and imaginary, a kind of vision the composer may have had as he wrote his patriotic operas. In the case of Verdi, the perception of his surroundings is auditory as well as visual. The sounds of battle, implied by the activity erupting behind the composer, are funneled into his ear, almost literally, by the wedge-shaped composition of the struggling revolutionary forces.  For the artist, contemplation and observation are necessary to the act of creation, but for a revolutionary artist, the dilemma of inaction is particularly acute. (Deborah Caplow)

Catalogue record number: 221