Viva Zapata (and Frida)

The revolution watches and waits at a corner grocery in East Hollywood. Emiliano Zapata (detail) shares the wall on the northwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Madison, just east of Vermont, with Frida Kahlo. It's an anachronistic pairing, inasmuch as Kahlo was still a child when Zapata was assassinated in 1919. And, while she was no doubt in complete sympathy with demands for "Tierra y Libertad," her interests ranged more widely and seemed more complex.

Both Kahlo and Zapata are frequent mural subjects in Los Angeles (Zapata especially). He has been rendered more dramatically and with greater thematic clarity on other walls, but this mural -- unsigned as far as I can tell -- has the virtue of especially rich and vivid coloring.



"Fire Monkey Fish" has an excellent Flickr set of L.A. mural photos here.