Deportation to Death (Deportación a la muerte)

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Deportation to Death (Deportación a la muerte)

Mexico, Mexico City, 1942
Prints; linocuts
Linocut
Sheet: 18 3/4 × 26 in. (47.63 × 66.04 cm); image: 13 3/4 × 20 in. (34.93 × 50.8 cm)
Gift of Jules and Gloria Heller (M.2003.92.15)
Not currently on public view

Provenance

Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico City, 1942; Dr. Jules Heller (1919–2007), Scottsdale, Arizona, 1947; LACMA, 2003.

Label

In Deportación a la muerte Leopoldo Méndez portrays a group of Jewish people on a train bound for a concentration camp.

...

In Deportación a la muerte Leopoldo Méndez portrays a group of Jewish people on a train bound for a concentration camp. This is thought to be one of the earliest artistic renderings of the Holocaust to be created outside of the camps. Méndez may have developed the print specifically for El libro negro del terror nazi en Europa (The Black Book of Nazi Terror), and it remains one of the best-known images from the book. Its circulation beyond its inclusion in El libro negro—through sales and other publications—attests to the power of this haunting image.


From exhibition Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany, 2022 (for more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in the accompanying publication, pp. 106–7)
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Bibliography

  • Kaplan, Rachel, and Erin Sullivan Maynes. Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2022.

Exhibition history

  • Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany Los Angeles, CA, Charles White Elementary School, October 29, 2022 - July 22, 2023