The artists in "An Artful Revolucion: Mexican Lithographs" were inspired by a politically progressive muse. You can see how that spirit influenced their style and subject matter in an exhibit at Howard Community College.

A slightly earlier generation of muralists that included Diego Rivera became famous for covering walls with boldly conceived paintings which celebrated working-class people in Mexico.

Conveying a message via a mural is a beautifully effective way to reach the people, but it's time-consuming to paint a mural and there are practical limits to how many walls can be painted.

Those inherent limitations were one reason why the Workshop of Poplar Graphic Arts was founded in 1937. Artist-made prints could be made in large editions, and the resulting handbills could be posted on walls all over the place.

The prints in this exhibit are small in size, but the compositional strategies owe a lot to the muralist tradition. Indeed, one of the most famous of the muralists, David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1975), is represented here by a print of Emiliano Zapata. That revolutionary leader is a solid figure seemingly fused with his equally solid horse.

Zapata has a big mustache on his round face and he's wearing a broad sombrero. He's a firmly grounded figure, in other words, and the hills in the distance serve as a reminder of the landscape through which he rode.

An even more striking example of a print that looks like a mini-mural is by Celia Calderon (1921-1969). Her "Cinco Mujeres" presents a frieze-like lineup of five women, some of whom are seen in full face and others in profile. The figurative lines are simple and thick in this modestly sized print, making it easy to read the image from a distance.

Xavier Iniguez (1932-1979), who worked as both a muralist and graphic designer, has a print, "Manifestacion '57," that overtly makes a political statement that is more implicit in some of the other prints. Iniguez depicts confident strikers appropriately marching leftward in the composition. One man's outstretched fist symbolically leads the way, and some of the figures in the background carry flags that soar so high they might as well be clouds.

Among those who don't resort to flag-waving and instead rely upon the innate dignity of their working-class subjects is Elizabeth Catlett. Born in 1919, this Washington, D.C. native lives part of the year in Mexico and part in the United States; she visited the Baltimore Museum of Art on the occasion of her exhibit there in 1999.

Depicting a shoeshine boy, Catlett's "Nino Bolero" is a powerfully conceived composition in which the viewpoint is low to the ground. While the shoeshine boy works, all we see of his customer is a lower leg and shoe. You don't need a political lecture when that sort of image tells you everything you need to know about class relations.

In Catlett's "Nina," the portrait of a girl possesses such quiet dignity that you sense her internal strength of character. Whatever hardships life throws her way, she seems like she'll be able to endure.

Although the prints in this exhibit are accompanied by useful wall texts and additional printed material, the show is joltingly sloppy at times. Texts supply biographical dates for the artists, but dates are in short supply when it comes to individual prints. Some of the prints are dated either within their titles or on the prints themselves, but others are displayed without any dates at all.

It's possible to figure out that many of the exhibited prints were done in the 1950s. But it's a curatorial lapse not to offer at least approximate dates within the context of such a history-conscious exhibit.

The labels sometimes could be more careful in the phrasing, as in this nearly surreal example: "Fanny Rabel (1922-1998) Born in Poland, Rabel arrived in Mexico in 1938 and lives now in Mexico City." How can you die in 1998 and yet still be living? That's quite a revolutionary accomplishment.

"An Artful Revolucion: Mexican Lithographs" continues through Oct. 6 in the Rouse Company Foundation Gallery at Howard Community College's Horowitz Visual and Performing Arts Center, in Columbia. Call 410-772-4189 or go to www.howardcc.edu/visitors.

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