That Which Must Not Come Lo Que No Puede Venir

Date

1945

Creator

Executed in 1945, toward the end of World War II, Méndez’s Lo Que No Puede Venir is a complex self-portrait commissioned by Carl O. Schniewind for his 1945 exhibition at the AIC [Art Institute of Chicago]. Schniewind had previously gone to Mexico to visit the TGP [Taller de Gráfica Popular], purchasing works by several artists with the intention of exhibiting them back in Chicago. Méndez created this piece for Schniewind while working in Chicago. Méndez produced only three self-portraits during his lifetime, this being the first. The imagery in this woodcut uses one of the denser schemes he had employed to date. We see the artist in the lower portion of the print, lying on a sea of portfolios by [José Guadalupe] Posada. Seemingly lost in a daydream, he writes his name and the year, 1945, on the top page. Deborah Caplow, in her study of Méndez’s work, observes that "this is not only a portrait of Mendéz but also a portrayal of Mexico at a precise moment in history at the end of World War II…The artist lies in front of a wall of cactus, from which we see emerge a rattlesnake and cross with an eagle crucified hanging from it, its wings pinned by crossed daggers. Blades in the shape of a swastika extend from the four directions of the cross." The variety of images and symbols that Méndez includes are drawn from pre-Columbian iconography and nineteenth-century cultural history. By using them here within the context of a self-portrait, he situates himself and his fellow artists within the heady political climate of Mexico City at the end of World War II. from Costa, Para la Gente: Art, Politics and Cultural Identity of the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Notre Dame, 2009)