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Collections

Leopoldo Méndez
Deportation to Death (Deportación a la muerte)1942

Not on view
Woodcut print in black ink on cream paper, depicting a crowd of figures packed into an open freight car at night, with smoke rising at left and small silhouetted figures along the tracks
Artist or Maker
Leopoldo Méndez
Mexico, Mexico City, 1902-1969
Title
Deportation to Death (Deportación a la muerte)
Date Made
1942
Medium
Linocut
Dimensions
Sheet: 18 3/4 × 26 in. (47.63 × 66.04 cm); image: 13 3/4 × 20 in. (34.93 × 50.8 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Jules and Gloria Heller
Accession Number
M.2003.92.15
Classification
Prints
Collecting Area
Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes

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)

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