In this artwork, how is the Context discussed?
In 1930, with his popularity on the rise with American audiences, Diego Rivera began to make lithographic prints for the American art market at the request of his gallerist, Carl Zigrosser, director of the Weyhe Gallery in New York, and Rivera's friend William Spratling. Rivera quickly adapted to the medium, admitting to Zigrosser that he had been seduced by the direct contact of the lithographic crayon to the stone's surface.In 1931 Diego Rivera became the second artist ever to hold a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, following Henri Matisse’s solo exhibition earlier that year. Rivera's exhibition was described as a "media event" and broke all museum attendance records at the time, drawing 56,575 attendees—more than double the attendance of the Mattisse show. For this exhibition, Rivera created several "portable murals," based on details of his murals in Mexico, for the purpose of connecting public American interest in his work with the original frescoes. The murals proved portable in name only: each panel, constructed of concrete poured over an armature of iron and steel, weighed nearly 1,000 pounds. To disseminate the mural images more widely, Rivera and Zigrosser elected to reproduce them as lithographs, which were affordable and accessible. This lithograph, along with four others, was created at the George C. Miller Print Shop in New York and published in 1932 by the Weyhe Gallery in New York. Rivera redrew the images for the prints himself and remained in New York after the MoMA exhibition to oversee their production.That Rivera was urged to create these lithographs speaks to his popularity as a celebrated Mexican artist in the United States. Zapata, the fifth of this series of five, is Rivera's best known and most-admired print. As Lyle Williams points out, "Diego Rivera's lithograph Zapata, 1932, is one of the seminal images of twentieth century printmaking, a landmark in the history not only of Mexican Art but of modern art."
Weyhe Gallery Diego Rivera Carl Zigrosser William Spratling lithograph frescoes Museum of Modern Art Henri Matisse