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Collections

Alfredo Zalce
Let’s Remove the Blinders!; Literacy Campaign (¡Quitemos la venda!; Campaña de alfabetización)1947

Not on view
Woodcut or linocut print on amber paper showing two bearded men huddled over papers, one blindfolded, the other leaning in close with bold black hatching throughout
Artist or Maker
Alfredo Zalce
Mexico, Michoacán, Pátzcuaro, 1908-2003
Title
Let’s Remove the Blinders!; Literacy Campaign (¡Quitemos la venda!; Campaña de alfabetización)
Date Made
1947
Medium
Linocut
Dimensions
Sheet: 15 3/4 × 10 5/8 in. (40.01 × 26.99 cm); image: 12 × 9 1/4 in. (30.48 × 23.5 cm)
Credit Line
Gift of Jules and Gloria Heller
Accession Number
M.2003.92.136
Classification
Prints
Collecting Area
Latin American Art
Curatorial Notes

Artists of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP; People’s Print Workshop) were concerned with creating clear, direct graphic images that could communicate visually with illiterate populations in Mexico. Education reform was a significant post-revolutionary goal, and in 1944 President Manuel Ávila Camacho instituted a massive national literacy campaign for adults. The program instructed all literate citizens to teach their peers to read and write, and legally obligated all those between the ages of six and forty who were unable to read to comply with instruction. Members of the TGP contributed directly to the campaign by creating instructional primers the government circulated, and by donating artworks to fundraising auctions.

Alfredo Zalce represented the literacy campaign in this linocut for the Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana (Prints of the Mexican Revolution) portfolio. A man teaches his friend how to read from a primer, perhaps one of the very publications illustrated by members of the TGP. As he does, he lifts the blindfold from his companion’s eyes, symbolically showing him the new world of understanding that literacy would bring.


For more information see the catalogue entry by Rachel Kaplan in Pressing Politics: Revolutionary Graphics from Mexico and Germany, 2022, pp. 64–65.

Provenance
Taller de Gráfica Popular, Mexico City, 1947; 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