Frightened woman in foreground holding a child, three figures in head cluster behind her holding tools, on red paper
Artwork Details
Medium
Woodcut print
Acquisition
Notes
Collection of DePaul Art Museum, gift of Lisa Aarli
Made/Created
Artist
Cortez, Carlos
Date made
1982
Ethnography
Notes
North America
United States
Lexicon
Getty AAT
Concept
Expressionist (style), European, Mexican American, Hispanic American, modern North American, modern American, Americas, The
Hierarchy Name
Styles and Periods (hierarchy name)
Facet
Styles and Periods Facet
Dimensions
Dimension Description
Sheet
Width
20 in
Length
26 in
Exhibitions
Fires Will Burn: Politically Engaged Art from the Permanent Collection
LATINXAMERICAN
Interpretative Labels
Label Type
Cultural/Historical Context
Label
Carlos Cortez, a prolific Chicago printmaker, continued the political and cultural work of his immigrant parents by creating woodcut prints for the Industrial Workers of the World, an international labor union founded in Chicago in 1905 to which Cortez himself belonged for nearly 60 years. Made for the Chicago Mural Group — a collective founded in 1971 and responsible for hundreds of public artworks across the city — this poster shows a woman painting a mural wherein the proximity between the muralist’s brush and the bayonet clutched by one of the figures in the background suggests the potency of art as a political weapon.