Río Escondido

Published 1948, La Estampa Mexicana, Mexico City

Description:  10 linocuts, loose in portfolio cover with introduction by Méndez

Date: 1948

Dimensions (cm): 40.7 x 52.0 (portfolio), 40.3 x 51.0 (each plate)

Published edition: 

1. Deluxe edition of 50 numbered copies on Corsican Forros paper

2. Regular edition of 100 numbered copies on Parsons Diploma Parchment paper

Signature and annotations: Impressions are signed in graphite, lower right, and annotated in graphite with the number in the series, lower left.  Portfolios are numbered in ink on front cover. 

References: Prignitz 713-722

Contents: 

1. El bruto

2. El dueño de todo

3. Tengo sed

4. También la tierra bebe tu sangre

5. Soledad

6. ¡Bestias!

7. Pequeña maestra ¡Qué inmensa es tu voluntad!

8. Las primeras luces

9. Las antorchas

10. Venciste

Commentary: The era of the 1940s and early 1950s is often called the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. Hundreds of films were produced during this time, and many of them won international acclaim. Méndez created images for a number of films by director Emilio Fernández, at the request of cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa: Río Escondido (1947), Pueblerina (1948), Un día de vida (1950), La rosa blanca (Momentos de la vida de José Martí) (1953), and Un Dorado de Pancho Villa (1966). He also made prints for a film directed by Roberto Gavaldón with cinematography by Figueroa, El rebozo de Soledad (1952) and he created prints that were based on, but not used in Fernández’s La rebelión de los colgados (1954), Gavaldón's  La rosa blanca (1961, different from La rosa blanca of 1953), and Benito Alazraki's Raices (1954).

Reflecting the films’ narrative content, Méndez used Figueroa’s stills for the prints, and he also sold them as individual prints and portfolios. Figueroa described Méndez’s work: “The collaboration with Leopoldo Méndez in the cinema was as follows: we would give him a film that we had just finished, he would interpret the theme and make eight or ten prints that we could use as the background for the titles. Then we would photograph them and put them on the screen. First just the print, without any letters on top, so that the audience could admire it at the size of the screen. It was a totally new possibility, seeing a print enlarged to this size, it was a real mural. Afterward we would put the titles on top but continue to show the print until it changed to another. The prints that appeared in Río Escondido, Pueblerina and La rosa blanca were the strongest and most beautiful that he did.” 

Méndez’s prints for Río Escondido parallel the scenes in the film. Río Escondido tells the story of an idealistic rural schoolmistress who comes to a remote village only to find that a brutal cacique (political boss) is terrorizing the community, denying the people of the village their basic rights, symbolized by his closing of the school and his control of the town water supply. He and his henchmen kill anyone who objects to their domination. The schoolteacher encourages the townspeople to resist, and she herself shoots the cacique when he attempts to rape her. The movie ends with an armed uprising, the formerly hopeless peasants united in armed struggle against their oppressors. The movie explores several themes in Mexican history and politics: the oppression of the landless and the need for agrarian reform; the importance of education, including both basic literacy and political education; access to health care, as symbolized by clean water; and the necessity of armed revolution. Méndez’s linoleum prints recapitulate key scenes in the film, without duplicating them exactly. (Deborah Caplow)

Cataloging note: Portfiolio design was by Lena Bergner and Hannes Meyer. Edition impressions were printed commercially by Imprenta Galatea.

Catalogue record number: 311