Six weeks before the opening of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in December 1931, Rivera began working on a new group of frescoes (paintings in wet plaster). Unlike his murals in Mexico City, which are permanently part of the building walls they decorate, the panels of these new frescoes were reinforced with steel frames so that they could be moved and exhibited. The most famous of these “portable frescoes” was his image of the Revolutionary hero and agrarian leader Emiliano Zapata. In this lithograph Zapata, in white cotton peasant dress and sandals, is shown as one of the Mexican people. He holds the reins of his loyal horse while brandishing a scythe as more farmers crowd in behind him. At his feet is the dead body of a wealthy landowner, a reference to Zapata’s influential role in the seizure and redistribution of land during the Mexican Revolution.