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Exhibition Art in Action: Herblock and Fellow Artists Respond to Their Times

Juan Fuentes (b. 1950). Posada y Yo, 2013. Linocut. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. © Juan Fuentes, used by permission (006.00.00)
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Legacies of Art and Activism

Contemporary California artist Juan Fuentes channels Leopoldo Méndez's 1953 homage to José Guadalupe Posada, Posada in His Workshop, in his own self-portrait Posada y Yo (Posada and Me). He presents a studio window view that shows police in riot gear with clubs subduing unarmed figures. Inside, a skeleton based on Posada's La Calavera Oaxaqueña (also published under the title Calaveras del Montón, Número 1), appears to run forward, burin in hand, to assist Fuentes in carving the scene into a linoleum block.