Social Graphic Art in Mexico*

Georg Stibi

Had the attempt by Mexican artists to surmount the artistic decadence and its repercussions that emerged with the end of the Italian Renaissance originated not in a half-colonial country but in one of the political and economic centers, “its global influence would today be absolutely predominant.” David Alfaro Siqueiros, one of Mexico’s most acclaimed painters and most perspicacious theorists and critics, passed this provocative judgment in his text “There is no way but our own” (No hay más ruta que la nuestra, Mexico 1945). No critical assessment of this judgment could ignore the fact that, up to now, consciousness in Europe of the Mexican revival movement in the visual arts has been extremely incomplete and fragmentary. With regard to the ideological content of this movement, almost no attempt has as yet been made to undertake a sociological analysis.

It would be impossible to expose the reasons and motives behind the powerful dynamic of renewal that occurred in almost every branch of the visual arts in Mexico if one tried to extract this phenomenon from its intimate connections with the country’s social and political movements. As for why it happened precisely in Mexico and not in some other Latin American country, and why, chronologically, this revival occurred (principally) in the period after 1910, or why it finally (a well-known fact) found its strongest expression in wall painting, but also (a less well-known fact) in graphic art—these and other questions can only be answered satisfactorily with reference to social conditioning.

In the last century, Mexico occupied the dominant position in the national struggles for independence from the Spanish colonial rulers. This struggle was more intense on Mexican soil and lasted longer than in other parts of South America and was embodied particularly by the reform movement under the leadership of the Indian President Benito Juárez. At the same time, it also had a more fundamental social basis as a militant protest against both foreign and domestic feudalism. Mexico’s immediate proximity with the USA, which by the middle of the century had appropriated almost half of Mexico’s territory (Texas, New-Mexico, etc.), lent these internal struggles the character of a confrontation between pro- and anti-imperial powers, between reactionary forces bent on the preservation of the feudal order and inspired by the model of foreign (especially American and English) imperialism on the one hand, and the democratic, anti-imperialist forces of the people on the other.

This confrontation—which of course is by no means concluded today but on the contrary gaining in intensity—was reflected in contemporary Mexican art to an exceptional degree, providing subject matter for some the most significant frescoes by Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Siqueiros, Pablo O’Higgins, Alfredo Zalce, Leopoldo Méndez, and others. Militant anti-imperialism is thus one of the fundamental attributes of modern Mexican art in that it has remained its principal driving force.

The great social movements in Mexico during the last century, much as they provide subject matter for many of today’s artistic representations, could not at the time create the conditions necessary for their full expansion. In terms of the structure of Mexican society, these movements usually ended in a compromise and finally in the reinforcement of feudal domination. The 1910 Revolution, which extended over several years and had a profound impact on the Mexican people, was the only one that culminated in the victory of the more liberal elements of the Mexican bourgeoisie and in the creation of a state power in which the influence of the industrial working classes and the revolutionary peasant movement was at least partially present. Only then was it possible to provide the material conditions without which the creation of the epochmaking Mexican mural paintings would have been impossible: the state allocation of the walls of large public buildings and of financial resources.

The Mexican artistic revival, then, is a direct consequence of the Revolution.

Alongside the wall frescos, other branches of the visual arts in Mexico gained strong momentum from the Revolution; least of all sculpture (Mexico is a poor, half-colonial country), and most of all graphic art, which was perhaps of equal importance to painting. Unlike mural painting, whose evolution was dependent upon the consummation of the revolutionary victory and which therefore could only become an effective implement of revolution a posteriori, graphic art was the medium par excellence of the revolutionary process itself. The revival movement in Mexican art did not emanate from painting but rather from graphic art, especially lithography and steel engraving.

In the 1850s and 1860s, the works of several important lithographers were already appearing in publications of Mexico’s anti-feudal and anticolonial opposition. During the combat under Juárez’s leadership against the French invasion, when Napoleon III sought to impose the Austrian Maximilian as emperor of Mexico, the newspaper “La Orquesta” (The orchestra) appeared each week over a period of several years with a full-page lithograph in every issue. The French influence (Daumier and others) was predominant. One of the most important Mexican lithographers of this period is C. Escalante.

In Mexican art of the last century (and, it is no exaggeration to say, the four centuries of vandalistic destruction of the greatest Indian works of art by the Spanish Conquistadors), one figure towers above all others: José Guadalupe Posada. Independent of all external influences, a pure product of his own people, Posada accomplished an oeuvre that was vast both in terms of its scope and of its originality, an oeuvre that makes him a major artist. Diego Rivera said of him that he was “as great as Goya and Callot, he was an artist of inexhaustible fecundity, he produced art as a spring produces hot water.”

“Posada, exponent of the hardships, the joys, and the innermost desires of the Mexican people, produced more than 15,000 engravings. . . . An analysis of Posada’s oeuvre would constitute a complete analysis of the social life of the Mexican people. His oeuvre incorporates the most significant and the most enduring values of artwork.” (Forward to “Monografía de 400 Grabados de José Guadalupe Posada” [Monography of 400 engravings by José

Guadalupe Posada], Mexico 1930). Like the graphic artists of the 1850s and ’60s, Posada (1852–1913) worked for publications associated with the democratic opposition to the dictatorship of Porfirio Díaz. He was a revolutionary artist in the widest and fullest sense of the word, a brilliant and unwavering combatant against reactionary feudalism, corruption and oppression.

Posada’s oeuvre has inspired the best of Mexico’s present generation of graphic artists, even if their creations break new grounds in terms of content and form. The Revolution created new conditions and set new objectives. In opening up wider perspectives for frescoes requiring immense surfaces, the “small” works of lithography, woodcuts, and linocuts were far from redundant; on the contrary, graphic art made even higher demands on itself. Graphic art shares an essential point in common with the fresco (or Duco): it is addressed, unlike the unique work of art, not to an individual buyer but rather to a multitude of beholders. Graphic works can be reproduced on demand and can convey their message to a broad range of social classes; they are “popular” in the noblest sense of the word, provided that commercial interests do not inhibit their fundamental purpose. As long as the impetus for the democratic popular uprising remained alive, the great majority of Mexican graphic artists served the revolutionary movement through their work, and, in return, the revolutionary movement left a fundamental imprint upon their art. The importance of Mexico’s contemporary art resides precisely in the fact that it does not elude the social conflicts, nor does it take refuge in nebulous abstractions but participates actively as a comrade-in-arms in the struggle for the noble cause.

The Mexican artists were not satisfied with simply registering or reflecting more or less faithfully the mounting political and social agitation; they became themselves a driving force of the Revolution. 1922 saw the formation of the “Sindicato de Pintores, Escultores y Grabadores Mexicanos” (Union of Painters, Sculptors and Graphic Artists of Mexico), a veritable coordination center for the artistic revival movement. From this union emanated the impetus for collective artistic actions that delivered solitary artists from their isolation and detachment. The union was also at the origin of the newspaper “El Machete” (The machete) (a machete is a blunt-ended tool for cutting corn, sugar cane, etc.), which obtained not only political but also artistic recognition, thanks to the woodcuts and linocuts it published. Many newspapers in the same spirit would appear later. In addition, a torrent of flyers and other writings with militant political or educational content was published to address questions of workers parties, trade unions, agricultural reform, housing conditions, healthcare, illiteracy, etc. Much of the best contemporary Mexican graphic art has been created for this specific purpose, thereby fulfilling an indisputably social function that is becoming lost almost everywhere else.

The social and artistic legacy of this great movement is perpetuated and is being revived today principally by an artists’ group formed at the end of 1937 under the leadership of Leopoldo Méndez in the “Taller de Gráfica Popular” (People’s Graphics Workshop) in Mexico City. The cofounders or more or less permanent collaborators of the “Taller” include, besides Méndez, many of Mexico’s bestknown painters and graphic artists: Alfredo Zalce, Pablo O’Higgins, Ángel Bracho, Raúl Anguiano, Ignacio Aguirre, Isidoro Ocampo, Everardo Ramírez, Jesus Escobedo, Francisco Dosamantes, etc. Younger artists include Fernando Castro Pacheco, Francisco Mora or Alberto Beltrán, and other artists such as Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, Luis Arenal, Antonio Pujol, Feliciano Pena, Carlos Mérida, José Chávez Morado. Emilio Amero, Xavier Guerrero, Agustín Villagra have also occasionally participated in the “Taller”’s projects. Almost all of the country’s significant artists were involved in an exhibition presented in the “Taller” in 1944 to protest against the refusal of one of Leopoldo Méndez’s lithographs by a commercial gallery. This exhibition constituted the most impressive show of Mexican art ever. Artists of other North- and SouthAmerican nationalities gravitated toward the “Taller de Gráfica Popular,” unique in its kind on the entire American continent.

In addition to producing hand-printed lithographs, woodcuts, and etchings in limited editions on special paper, the “Taller de Gráfica Popular” also printed mass editions of posters and flyers. As a general rule its limited editions of art folders (most of which were realized by “La Estampa Mexicana” (The Mexican Print) the publishing house affiliated with the “Taller”), produced for museums and private collectors, were of works that had originally been produced for concrete purposes motivated by social objectives; and so the functional character of this art was also conserved in a collector’s edition. In the immediate prewar period and during the war, thirty different posters left the “Taller,” mostly lithographs, printed on a primitive printing press from Paris dating from 1870. These posters informed the Mexican people about the nature of fascism and urged them to resist. The “Taller” printed other posters for trade unions or similar organizations, using artistic means to support workers’ demands for wage increases or teachers’ demands for improvements in the school system. Nine years ago the “Taller’s first important publication was a booklet containing seven lithographs by Leopoldo Méndez, Mexico’s most significant contemporary graphic artist, with the title “En nombre de Cristo han sido asesinados mas de doscientos maestros” (More than twohundred teachers have been murdered in the name of Christ). This publication forced the state institutions to intervene against the terror campaign that the Mexican fascists—the so-called Cristeros—had unleashed against progressive educators. The lithographs . . . bear eloquent witness to the fact that the participation of artists in the social struggles of their people and of their time was not detrimental to their work but, on the contrary, their work is lasting because of the authentic expression with which these struggles imbued it.

Will Mexican art continue on the path to revival for which the catalyst was the 1910 Revolution? This question is a subject for much discussion in Mexico today. The bourgeoisie have partially achieved their objectives and are now no longer interested in continuing social reform but rather in consolidating their domination. They have become rich, and some have become individual art buyers. Certain artists now work for this market, adapting their work in accordance with the imported taste of the bourgeoisie and relinquishing popular subjects. Hence the affirmation that Mexican art is in crisis; it is the crisis of the Mexican Revolution or—if we prefer—the crisis of society per se. There is no doubt, however, that in this crisis the most important representatives of Mexican art and of the Mexican intellectuals are on the people’s side.

Leopoldo Méndez Cómo pretenden [How they try], 1944

Taller de Gráfica Popular Estampas de la Revolución Mexicana [Prints of the Mexican Revolution]

1947 Linocut

Mexico City, La Estampa Mexicana

85 prints

Arturo García Bustos, Forced Laborer

Arturo García Bustos, The Peasants’

Alfredo Zalce, “Kill Them Immediately!” Veracruz, 25 June 1879

Jesús Escobedo, Acordada Women

Alfredo Zalce, Forced Labor in Valle Nacional, 1890–1900

Mariana Yampolsky, The Youth of Emiliano Zapata: Objective Lesson Leopoldo Méndez, Freedom of Press [“We Adopt a Patriarchal Policy,” Porfirio Díaz] Alberto Beltrán, Persecution of the Liberal Party by the Porfiriato

Fernando Castro Pacheco, The Río Blanco Strike: Textile Workers Take Up the Fight, 7 January 1907

Fernando Castro Pacheco, Epilogue of the Río Blanco Strike, 8 January 1907

Alberto Beltrán, Porfirio Díaz Makes Declarations to Mr Creelman about the People’s Civil Liberties, 1908

Alfredo Zalce, An Anti-reelection Demonstration Is Broken Up Alfredo Zalce, The Porfirio Díaz Dictatorship Demagogically Extols the Indigenous, 1910

Jesús Escobedo, Revolutionary Workers

Alfredo Zalce, Venustiano Carranza, Promotor of the Constitution of 1917 (1859–1920)

Isidoro Ocampo, The Death of Emiliano Zapata, 10 April 1919

Ignacio Aguirre, The Nation Is Sovereign Fernando Castro Pacheco, Carrillo Puerto, a Symbol of the Revolution of the South-East Alfredo Zalce, Schools, Roads, Dams: The Programme and Implementation of the Álvaro Obregón (1920–1923) and Plutarco Elías Calles Governments