The Granaries (Las Trojes)

Leopoldo Méndez

1931

A wood engraving showing a peasant woman with a basket beside cone-shaped maize granaries, made to record and dignify rural Mexican labor and communal food practices.

Stark, knife-like black-and-white carving makes the oversized woman loom in the foreground against rhythmic, conical granaries and tiny burdened figures, giving the scene a monumental, empathetic intensity.

An early work by Leopoldo Méndez, this print exemplifies the Mexican modern print revival that transformed woodcut into a politically engaged, widely reproducible tool for making rural labor and social conditions visible.

Palette

Art Terms

Print Relief print Figurative Social Realism Mexican Muralism Modern art

Exhibitions

Spanish and U.S. Government Posters

1937

Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art

1940

Mexican Costumes by Carlos Mérida

1942

Mexican Art

1978