Copied
Malaquias Montoya, Viet Nam / Aztlan, 1973, offset lithograph on paper, sheet: 26 × 19 in. (66.0 × 48.3 cm) image: 22 1⁄2 × 17 1⁄4 in. (57.2 × 43.8 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase through the Frank K. Ribelin Endowment, 2015.29.3, © 1973, Malaquias Montoya
Copied
Artwork Details
- Title
- Viet Nam / Aztlan
- Artist
- Date
- 1973
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- sheet: 26 × 19 in. (66.0 × 48.3 cm) image: 22 1⁄2 × 17 1⁄4 in. (57.2 × 43.8 cm)
- Copyright
- © 1973, Malaquias Montoya
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase through the Frank K. Ribelin Endowment
- Mediums Description
- offset lithograph on paper
- Classifications
- Keywords
- Figure group — male
- History — United States — Vietnam War
- Chicano
- Object Number
- 2015.29.3
Artwork Description
Montoya's activist artmaking began in the context of the California farm workers' movement but soon referenced the full cultural and political dimensions of the fight for Chicano civil rights. His iconic Viet Nam/Aztlan reveals the links among the antiwar, anticolonial, and civil rights movements. Its design equates Vietnam with Aztlán, the mythic Chicano homeland said to be located in the southwestern United States, identifying Chicanos as a conquered and occupied people. In the middle, a Vietnamese soldier and a Chicano man merge together. At bottom, beneath yellow and brown clenched fists, is the Spanish word Fuera, meaning "get out."
Exhibitions
March 15, 2019–August 18, 2019
Artists Respond: American Art and the Vietnam War, 1965-1975 makes vivid an era in which artists endeavored to respond to the turbulent times and openly questioned issues central to American civic life.