Domingo Ulloa
1960, oil on Masonite
The large canvas, which depicts a group of Mexican farm workers behind barbed wire, evokes the pathos and humanity of those who work for our food but remain out of our radar. It also clearly conjures the very similar, haunting images Allied soldiers encountered as they liberated Nazi concentration camps at the end of World War II: gaunt, dazed, barely clothed and starving men and women — mostly Jews, but also other outcast victims of the Holocaust — walking out of desolate barracks, not quite believing that their Hell was over.
Because these are workers and not merely victims, the portraits show a certain determination, a clue that they retain some control over their own fate. But present there is also a question to the viewer, implicit, perhaps, in the WWII footage, but here posed by the workers themselves: “Is this a morally defensible way to treat fellow human beings?” From the Autry Blog.