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Collections

Leopoldo Méndez
Little School Teacher, How Immense is Thy Will! (Pequeña maestra, ¡qué inmensa es tu voluntad!)1947, published 1948

Not on view
Woodcut print in black ink on cream paper; a cloaked figure walks across a flat, reflective plain while a large, elongated white animal form leaps through a dark, turbulent sky above
Artist or Maker
Leopoldo Méndez
Mexico, Mexico City, 1902-1969
Publisher
La Estampa Mexicana
Mexico, Mexico City
Title
Little School Teacher, How Immense is Thy Will! (Pequeña maestra, ¡qué inmensa es tu voluntad!)
Date Made
1947, published 1948
Medium
Linocut
Dimensions
Sheet: 15 15/16 × 20 1/16 in. (40.48 × 50.96 cm); image: 12 1/16 × 16 3/8 in. (30.64 × 41.59 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Jules and Gloria Heller
Accession Number
M.2003.92.13
Classification
Prints
Collecting Area
Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes

This linocut belongs to a suite of ten prints that Leopoldo Méndez created for the film Río Escondido (Hidden River), directed by Emilio Fernández (1904–1986) and shot by Gabriel Figueroa (1907–1997)—two greats of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema. The prints, which appear during the film’s opening credits, are graphic interpretations of scenes viewers see as the narrative unfolds.

In Little School Teacher, How Immense Is Thy Will! (Pequeña maestra, ¡qué inmensa es tu voluntad!), Méndez shows the film’s protagonist (played by Mexican movie star María Félix) beginning a long trek to the town where she has been dispatched to teach. Wrapped in a rebozo (shawl), the diminutive teacher trudges through an immense, barren landscape—imagery taken directly from the film. Overhead, Méndez introduces a soaring eagle and a figure carrying the Mexican flag. Méndez had long aspired to make graphic murals and to create prints on a monumental scale; the horizontal format, dramatic chiaroscuro, and overall sense of dynamism lend the work a cinematic quality.


For more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany, 2022, pp. 98–99.

Provenance
Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico City, 1948; Dr. Jules Heller (1919–2007), Scottsdale, Arizona; LACMA, 2003.
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.
  • Scruggs, Dalila, editor. Elizabeth Catlett: a Black Revolutionary Artist and all that it Implies. Washington: National Gallery of Art, 2024.
Selected Exhibition History
  • Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film. September 22, 2013 - February 2, 2014
  • Under the Mexican Sky: Gabriel Figueroa—Art and Film. September 22, 2013 - February 2, 2014
  • 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