Cristo

Siqueiros made four small paintings of Christ between August and September 1963 while in prison, charged with “social dissolution” for his alleged participation in student riots. Raised as a young boy in the Roman Catholic faith, he took renewed interest in religion during his incarceration, befriending two progressive Catholics and following the proceedings of the Second Vatican Council, whose radical commitment to the poor and to social justice resounded across Latin America. The present lithograph is based on "Cristo del pueblo", among the works painted in prison, in which an indigenous Christ—a modern Man of Sorrows—suffers for his people, his body stricken and bloodied. Depicted in a traditional half-length format, "Cristo del pueblo" is crowned with thorns and darkly outlined, his flesh shaded in raw pigments of red, white, and yellow that, in their visceral immediacy, elicit feelings of empathy and compassion. Siqueiros renders Christ’s self-sacrifice with an expressive pathos that recalls his extraordinary painting of the 1930s, the decade that established his position at the forefront of Mexico’s revolutionary Mural movement.

This text was created in collaboration with the University of Maryland Department of Art History & Archaeology and written by Abigail McEwen.