In response to the death of Che Guevara, the leftist Evergreen Review commissioned Davis to design a cover image depicting the revolutionary, based on a now-iconic photograph by Alberto Korda given to the artist by the magazine. The photograph had not yet been circulated in the United States, so this would be the first time many American citizens had seen an image of Guevara. Davis’s portrait blended Socialist Realism with devotional folk art, intensifying the sense of heroism and martyrdom of the subject. The posters created a furor among anti-Castro Cubans in New York, who defaced them and set off a bomb at the offices of the publisher, Grove Press, in retaliation.