- Title
- Ten Tragic Days of Victoriano Huerta (Decena trágica de Victoriano Huerta)
- Date Made
- 1937
- Medium
- Lithograph
- Dimensions
- Sheet: 25 5/8 × 19 9/16 in. (65.09 × 49.69 cm); irregular image: 15 1/4 × 12 15/16 in. (38.74 × 32.86 cm)
- Accession Number
- M.2001.200.5
- Collecting Area
- Latin American Art
- Curatorial Notes
This lithograph appeared in the Taller de Gráfica Popular’s (People’s Print Workshop) first commission: a calendar for the Universidad Obrera de México (Workers’ University of Mexico). In this image, Luis Arenal Bastar illustrates the month of February. Between February 9 and 13, 1913, Mexico City was engulfed in a bloody revolt that culminated with the coup of General Victoriano Huerta (1850–1916) over the democratically elected President Francisco I. Madero (1873–1913). Known as the Decena Trágica (Ten Tragic Days), this was a momentous event for photojournalists, who recorded some of the earliest examples of live combat. Arenal surely drew from such images for this lithograph: the pockmarked buildings and downed utility lines—lingering evidence of gunshots and cannon fire—are ubiquitous in photographs documenting the uprising.
For more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany, 2022, pp. 16–17.
- Selected Bibliography
- Kaplan, Rachel, and Erin Sullivan Maynes. Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2022.
- Selected Exhibition History
- Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany. October 29, 2022 - July 22, 2023
- Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany. October 29, 2022 - July 22, 2023
