Mexican Prints at the Vanguard
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
September 12, 2024 – January 5, 2025
Poster advertising an exhibition of work by young Mexican artists held in the Retiro Park, Madrid (detail), 1929
Woodcut, letterpress
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,
Gift of Gabriel Fernández Ledesma, 1930 (30.88.1)
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard at The Met Fifth Avenue, Galleries 691–93, explores the rich tradition of printmaking in Mexico—from the 18th century to the mid-20th century—through works drawn mainly from the Museum’s collection. Among the early works presented are those by Mexico’s best-known printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, whose depictions of skeletons engaged in different activities helped establish a global identity for Mexican art. Following the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), printmaking proved to be the ideal medium for artists wanting to address social and political concerns and voice resistance to the rise of fascism around the world. Artists also turned to printmaking to reproduce Mexican murals from the 1920s and to create exhibition posters, prints for the popular press, and portfolios celebrating Mexican dress and customs.
Featuring over 130 works, including woodcuts, lithographs, and screen prints, by artists such as Posada, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, Elizabeth Catlett, and Leopoldo Méndez, the exhibition explores how prints were central to artistic identity and practice in Mexico and highlights their effectiveness in addressing social and political issues, a role of the graphic arts that continues today. The bulk of The Met’s expansive collection came through the French-born artist Jean Charlot, whose association with the Museum began in the late 1920s. Charlot donated many of his own prints and works by other artists to The Met, and in the mid-1940s acted on behalf of the Museum to acquire prints in Mexico.
“This remarkable exhibition evokes the continued resonance of the graphic arts in Mexico and illuminates treasures of The Met collection—many of which have never been exhibited before,” said Max Hollein, The Met’s Marina Kellen French Director and Chief Executive Officer. “Reflecting a vibrant tradition that is deeply imbued with political and social history, these works exemplify the extraordinary power of print as a medium and the importance of creative expression as response to specific cultural moments.”Mark McDonald, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints at The Met, said, “As a long-preferred medium for artists to challenge and support social and political issues, printmaking provides a rich visual record of Mexican history. This exhibition activates The Met’s unique ability to explore this visual history through its extensive holdings of Mexican prints in addition to highlighting a key moment in the Museum’s collecting practice.”
Among the exhibition’s featured works are prints that survive in unique impressions and have not been published, offering a singular glimpse into the breadth of printmaking in Mexico. These include a group of posters from the late 1920s that address public health, workers’ rights, and education. The collection demonstrates The Met’s early interest in Mexican art and culture at a time when there was growing international interest in the subject.
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard is presented in six chronologically organized sections across three galleries. It begins with an overview of the history of Mexican printmaking, emphasizing how prints were central to artistic and political expression in Mexico especially during the 20th century, and a description of how a large number of works came to be in The Met collection through the French-born artist Jean Charlot, who spent most of the 1920s in Mexico.
The exhibition then explores early printmaking in Mexico starting in the mid-18th century, tracking its development through the end of the 19th century and demonstrating the range of purposes for which prints were used. The first prints created in Mexico in the mid-16th century were woodcuts and engravings for book illustration and devotional purposes; this continued until the mid-19th century, when lithography became the principal medium. In the second half of the 19th century, printed political caricature developed as a powerful tool to defend freedom of thought.
A section about artist José Guadalupe Posada and his contemporaries broadens the narrative of the growth of printmaking in the early 20th century and its many visual manifestations. Posada has often been described as the progenitor of printmaking in Mexico, with a career that spanned a period of tremendous social and political change.
Next, the exhibition focuses on the Mexican Revolution as the defining event of modern Mexico that tremendously impacted society and artistic expression. The Revolution became the focus of social and political struggle that is most prominently reflected through prints, and interpretations of the Revolution continued to be refined and reinterpreted long after it ended. This section looks at the conflict from its origins and as memory, as well as how it became a reference point for social and political activism in Mexico that continues to this day.
In the post-Revolutionary period, prints became the essential medium for promoting artistic, social, and political values. Public art was key to a state-sponsored effort to establish a new cultural identity. Mural painting has received the most attention—mainly because it is an ambitious undertaking and because of the fame of the artists involved, such as Diego Rivera—but an equally remarkable revival of printmaking took place. Prints showcase Mexico’s political, social, and artistic depth. Woodcuts in particular represented new ideologies related to democracy, education, and the avant-garde.
A section dedicated to the Taller de Gráfica Popular (Workshop of Popular Graphic Art), established in Mexico City in 1937, illuminates the workshop’s development into one of the important printmaking collectives of the 20th century, producing striking posters, flyers, and portfolios that address mainly social and political issues.
The exhibition concludes with a look at printmaking in the 1940s and beyond, as the preoccupations of the artists associated with the Taller de Gráfica Popular slowly shifted to accommodate middle-class consumption. This section highlights materials including portfolios of limited-edition fine art prints that focus on Mexican dress and customs and children’s book illustrations to evoke the paths along which printmaking developed during the 1940s, often targeting an international market.
Printmaking continues to be widely practiced in Mexico. Inspired by earlier traditions and often referencing revolutionary heroes, symbols, and themes, new communities of artists continue to create remarkable posters and flyers for public display.
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard is curated by Mark McDonald, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Met.
