Profesor Arnulfo Sosa Portillo

Date: 1939

Medium: Lithograph

Dimensions (cm.): 27.1 x 20.5

Published edition:

Contemporary publication: 

Principal references: Exposición de Homenaje 362, Prignitz 396

Selected additional references (illustrated): Barajas, 35; Buchloh and Harewood 2022, 235; Caplow 2017, 150; Carrillo Azpeitia 1984, pl. 41; Centro de Estudios Económicos 1981, 6; Maples Arce 1970, pl. 28; Prignitz-Poda 2018, ch. 5; Reyes Palma 1994, pl. 66; Ricker 2015, 260; Ricker 2015, 262

Selected public collections: AIC; IAGO; MMA; MoMA; NMMA

Commentary: Profesor Arnulfo Sosa Portillo, like the other prints in the portfolio En nombre de Cristo, makes use of significant symbolism. The newspaper account on which Méndez based this image describes the event: “A party of armed men…set fire to the school and killed the rural school teacher Profesor Arnulfo Sosa Portillo, with machetes. His body was found abandoned in the Municipal Building. This teacher, on understanding the danger he was in, had taken refuge in the Municipal Building, but did not find the security he sought there, as the authorities were forced to flee and abandoned him to his fate….” The attackers are campesinos in large sombreros and country dress; they wield large machetes against the teacher, swirling around in a macabre dance. The teacher falls toward the viewer, dramatically foreshortened, like St. Matthew in Caravaggio’s Calling of St. Matthew. As in Profesor Juan Martínez Escobar, the artist has emphasized the hands, those of the teacher being especially large and expressive, while the attackers all have small, tense fists. (Deborah Caplow)

Related prints: This is one of the seven lithographs memorializing murdered teachers included in the portfolio En nombre de Cristo.

Obras relacionadas: Esta es una de las siete litografías que conmemoran a los maestros asesinados incluidas en la carpeta En nombre de Cristo.

Catalogue record number: 246