Mexico and the People: Revolutionary Printmaking and the Taller De Gráfica Popular

During its most turbulent and formative years of the twentieth century, Mexico witnessed decades of political frustration, a major revolution, and two World Wars. By the late 1900s, it emerged as a modernized nation, thrust into an ever-growing global sphere. The revolutionary voices of Mexico’s people that echoed through time took root in the arts and emerged as a collective force to bring about a new self-awareness and change for their nation. Mexico’s most distinguished artists set out to challenge an overpowered government, propagate social-political advancement, and reimagine a stronger, unified national identity. Following in the footsteps of political printmaker José Guadalupe Posada and the work of the Stridentist Movement, artists Leopoldo Méndez and Pablo O’Higgins were among the founders who established two major art collectives in the 1930s: Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR) and El Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP). In 1946, artists of the TGP created twelve lithographs published in an album entitled Mexican People for the Associated American Artists (AAA) gallery in New York City. After decades of social strife, this publication represents the continuation of the TGP’s political agenda in the aftermath of the Mexican Revolution. As the collective’s work gained the recognition of foreign art circles, American art markets sought imagery of an idealized post-revolutionary Mexico. In between American ideas of its southern neighbor and the politics of the TGP, the album Mexican People presents a modernized Mexican identity represented by the labors of its workers. [excerpt]https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/artcatalogs/1035/thumbnail.jp