Grief (Afliccion); The Peasant (El Campesino)

Inscriptions

Signed, in graphite, lower right: J. C. Orozco; inscribed, in graphite, lower left: 63/100; lower center: Para el Sr. y la Sra Laurence Schmeckebier / N.Y. December 1932.

Label

The leaning figure’s clasped hands obscure his face, yet his emotion is nevertheless evident. He is in a state of agony, enveloped in a somber palette of blacks and grays, with shoulders tense, head bowed down, and knuckles clenched so tight they appear to lose all color. What, exactly, are his hands conveying to us? Is he praying, pleading, or so tormented by emotion that he cannot show his face? By having the figure fill the frame, Orozco forces us to confront the man’s grief and grapple with the tension created.

From the 2022 exhibition A Space for Dialogue 109, Nothing Gold Can Stay, curated by Amy Zaretsky '23, Conroy Intern

Course History

ARTH 16, LACS 48, Mexican Muralism, Mary Coffey, Spring 2012

ARTH 7, Orozco, Mary Coffey, Spring 2014

ARTH 72, Mexican Muralism, Mary Coffey, Spring 2015

ARTH 40.04, LACS 30.09, Mexicanidad: Constructing and Dismantling Mexican National Identity, Mary Coffey, Winter 2019

Exhibition History

A Space for Dialogue 109, Nothing Gold Can Stay, Amy Zarestky, Class of 2023, Alvin P. Gutman Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, 29 October - 23 December 2022

Jose Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, California, March 9-May 19, 2002; Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, June 8-December 15, 2002; Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City, Mexico, January 25-April 13, 2003.

Publication History

Renato Gonzalez Mello and Diane Miliotes, Jose Clemente Orozco in the United States, 1927-1934, Hanover: Trustees of Dartmouth College (Copublished by W.W. Norton and Company), 2002, p. 83, fig. 71, listed p.291.

Provenance

The artist; given to Mr. and Mrs. Laurence E. Schmeckebier, December 1932; bequeathed to the Schmeckebier family, 1984; sold to the present collection, 1985.

Catalogue Raisonne

C. Orozco, Catalogo completo de la obra grafica de Orozco, 1970, no. 14.

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