Zapata is based on Agrarian Leader Zapata (1931), one of eight "portable" frescoes produced explicitly for Rivera's solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in 1931, which was adapted from his previous Revolt panel from a fresco titled The History of Cuernavaca and Morelos (1929–30) painted in the Palace of Cortés, Cuernavaca.

Rivera quickly adapted to the medium, admitting to Zigrosser that he had been seduced by the direct contact of the lithographic crayon to the stone's surface.

The murals proved portable in name only: each panel, constructed of concrete poured over an armature of iron and steel, weighed nearly 1,000 pounds.

In his left hand, he holds the bridle of a white horse[10] and in his right he wields a sickle used for cutting sugarcane, the staple hacienda product of Zapata's home state of Morelos.

The background is a vague and natural environment, as observed by Oles, to emphasize the popular culture and idealization of folkways of Mexico rather than its monuments.

[11] This lithograph is characterized by smooth, curvilinear forms whose volumes are rendered with the even gradients of tone typical of Rivera's style.

Rivera used tonal variations in the black and white Zapata to similar effect as he did color in the painted murals he used as its source material.

In his mural, Agrarian Leader Zapata, one of the sources for the lithograph, Rivera accentuated the two figures by leaving the fresco's brilliant white plaster undercoat exposed.

[18] It was clear to Rivera that there were three ways of seeing Zapata; one as the idealized charro revolutionary, one as the leader of the campesino movement, and finally, as martyr.

Another Mexican artist, José Clemente Orozco "scorned this type of imagery as romanticizing poverty and backwardness; nevertheless, in their very idealization, these images reassured viewers in Mexico and abroad that the peasants behind the Revolution were actually contained and content.