Mexico has the oldest printmaking tradition of any country in the Americas. The first press was established in 1539 near the Zócalo—the heart of ancient and modern Mexico City—with materials provided by the publishing firm of Juan Cromberger in Seville, Spain.[1] During the early years, woodcuts and engravings, mainly of religious subjects, were employed for book illustration. As printmaking became widespread, prints came to serve very different needs, as demonstrated by a thesis proclamation printed on silk from 1756. Works such as this one are exceptional and cannot be considered representative of quotidian practice, but they indicate the reach of printmaking and the range of its uses. Prints embody Mexico’s political, social, and artistic depth and engage with the country’s long history. By operating as active agents in the narratives they promote, prints themselves have instigated change, shaping the competing politics, identities, and collective memories of Mexico.
The founding of the Academia de San Carlos in Mexico City in 1781 had significant consequences for printmaking. Following a European model, engraving was part of the curriculum, and in 1831 lithography was introduced to the program.[2] Lithographic workshops soon began producing high-quality prints of subjects that included Mexican topography, dress, and customs for both local and international markets.[3]
By the mid-nineteenth century, printmaking in Mexico increasingly had assumed a social purpose, attending to events of the day that were often viewed through a satirical lens. Early prints generally survive in low numbers and were not collected until the twentieth century. The impulse to preserve them developed alongside the inexorable growth of printmaking, especially after the Mexican Revolution (1910–20), when prints came to serve a broader democratic political agenda that sought to educate Mexicans through art. Prints perfectly suited ideology and ambition: they were cheap, created in multiples, and easily disseminated, thereby differentiating them from easel painting, which came to be regarded as reflecting “bourgeois individualism.”[4] The importance of the country’s pre-Hispanic civilizations, which had largely been suppressed, was also an area of renewed interest for Mexican identity, with Indigenous Mexican traditions increasingly recognized and celebrated.
Mexico to New York
Among the lesser-known collections at The Met is a group of almost two thousand Mexican prints and illustrated books. The material spans from about 1740 to the 1950s, with the greatest concentration of work created after the late nineteenth century. The collection is distinguished by the number of rare and even unique works in very good condition. Notably, it was not shaped by generations of curators and donors but formed largely through the agency of an individual, Jean Charlot (1898–1979), whose peripatetic life, practice as an artist, and intellectual preoccupations brought him into contact with Met curators in the late 1920s. The charting of Charlot’s beginnings as an artist in Paris and then in Mexico, as well as his subsequent career in the United States, is facilitated by abundant documentation in the form of letters, his personal diaries, and publications.[5] Charlot spent most of the 1920s in Mexico City, where he worked as an artist, writer, and teacher. Through the friendships Charlot formed with artists, he had unique access to their work, and the character of the collection at The Met very much reflects these relationships.
He was born Louis Henri Jean Charlot in Paris. His grandfather Louis Goupil was born in Mexico, and his great-uncle Eugène Goupil was a collector of Mexican art, which had an enormous influence on the development of his artistic sensibilities.[6] Charlot and his mother, Anne Goupil Charlot, left France from the Atlantic port of Saint Nazaire on December 31, 1920, arriving in Veracruz, Mexico, on January 23, 1921. Eventually, Charlot shared a studio in Coyoacán (then a village outside Mexico City) with the artist Fernando Leal (1896–1964), and, a year later, in 1922, Charlot became an assistant to the muralist Diego Rivera (1886–1957) and eventually made murals himself.
This was at the time the Mexican government began sponsoring artists to adorn public buildings with murals that celebrated the forging of the Mexican nation, beginning with the incursions of the Spanish and culminating in the revolution of 1910. Mobilized by the revolution, the “renaissance” of Mexican art—as it is sometimes described—recognized multiple and diverse artistic traditions and the freedom to develop individual styles, in contrast to the prior adherence to the aesthetic traditions of Europe.[7] The visual arts were incorporated to a striking degree in notions of how to construct a modern nation, a central preoccupation of revolutionary thinking. The ambitious mural program that evolved in Mexico during the 1920s is one expression of this blossoming; printmaking is another.
Alongside his work as a muralist, Charlot created woodcuts for books, compilations of poetry, and periodicals. Before he arrived in Mexico, woodcut was not widely practiced by local artists, and it was a medium ignored by the academy. Charlot became the key figure in its efflorescence. In Coyoacán, Charlot began to teach classes on woodcut at the OpenAir Painting School while continuing to produce his own work. Established in villages and towns around Mexico City in the early 1920s, these schools were the result of a government policy to instruct Indigenous and working-class children, and to encourage a unified national culture.[8] Because woodcut did not require arduous or specialized training, it perfectly suited students’ needs. Remarkable prints were created and exhibitions of them organized; they stand as testimonies to the efficacy of the technique and its broad appeal.
Woodcut also became the principal medium for newspaper illustration.The best example to illustrate this point is El Machete, the organ of the Union of Technical Workers, Painters, and Sculptors. It was first published in early 1924, and by November the same year it had become the official paper of the Communist Party. Its executive committee consisted of Rivera, Siqueiros, and Guerrero, who resolved to work collectively and support the popular classes in their struggle. Pioneering the graphic representation of the worker, El Machete was designed as a foldout and gave prominence to bold imagery intimately tied to promoting working-class values. It was aimed at a working-class reader, as styled by Tina Modotti (1896–1942) in several photographs. Printed on thin, cheap paper, El Machete ostensibly was not meant to last, but there is evidence that the artistic quality of the illustrations was valued.
New York and The Met
On October 22, 1928, Charlot and his mother departed Mexico for New York. Five days later, they were welcomed by Orozco, who had been in the city since the previous December. Charlot and his mother rented an unheated apartment on the top floor of 42 Union Square.[9] Charlot immersed himself in the art world and continued working as an artist. His art was, however, already familiar to New York audiences. The artist and art historian Walter Pach had shown Charlot’s paintings alongside drawings by Mexican schoolchildren in an exhibition at the Art Center of New York in 1926. As his diaries reveal, Charlot had come to know Pach in Mexico in 1922 and met up with him again in New York.[10] Pach—who lectured regularly at The Met and had close relations with commercial galleries—no doubt introduced Charlot to those he needed to know, which probably included Met staff.[11]
Soon after arriving in New York, Charlot visited The Met, where he encountered the staff in the Department of Prints (as it was then known): William M. Ivins Jr. was curator, and Alice H. Newlin was assistant. Given Charlot’s experience as a printmaker, combined with the fact that his prints were being published and exhibited in New York, it is not surprising that he gravitated toward the Museum. The first record of Charlot’s direct liaison with Met staff, on May 28, 1929, is recorded in his diary; on this day, he brought his prints to the Print Room and three were acquired.[12] A little later, on June 27, Charlot was delighted to see one of the three, Leopard hunter, on display.[13]
Encouraged by his success in establishing cordial relations, Charlot donated a remarkable group of forty-five prints that he had brought with him from Mexico. The group included eight works by José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) and Los pequeños grabadores en madera (1925), a portfolio of twenty-six student woodcuts for which Charlot had written a lengthy prologue. The gift also contained seven woodcuts created in early 1924 by Guerrero and Siqueiros with politically motivated and revolutionary subjects for the newspaper El Machete.
Ivins was determined to build a collection that, in addition to works by old masters and modern artists, incorporated an array of printed material that included ephemera. This aspiration was continued by his successor, A. Hyatt Mayor. Their attitudes struck a chord with Charlot, who shared similar values regarding the egalitarian qualities of prints. Encouraged by Ivins, in 1930, Charlot gave some 350 prints in three separate groups, consisting mainly of works by Posada and Manuel Manilla (ca. 1830–1895), followed by those by Siqueiros and Guerrero, that he had acquired in Mexico during the 1920s.[14]
Mexico in New York
While the expansion of the print collection at The Met was due to Ivins’s encouragement and Charlot’s knowledge and friendships, it also very much reflected the interest in Mexican culture in the United States during the 1920s and what has been described as an “invasion” of Mexican art.[15] The interest was powered by strong cultural and commercial relations between the two countries.
The prevalence of Mexican art, especially by living artists, in the New York art world in particular testifies to the fascination with all things Mexican in the United States. From the mid-1920s, for example, the Weyhe Gallery arranged exhibitions and published prints by Orozco, Rivera, and Siqueiros, among others, and was involved in Mexico well into the 1930s. Its owner Erhard Weyhe and gallery director Carl Zigrosser gifted and sold Mexican prints to The Met during this time, further proof of the Museum’s receptiveness to expanding its holdings of this material. Indeed, Weyhe and Zigrosser sold possibly the best-known Mexican print to the Museum—Rivera’s lithograph of the revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata, after the artist’s mural in the Palace of Cortés in Cuernavaca.
Two exhibitions held at The Met in 1930 represent a turning point for the institution, introducing hitherto unseen material and embellishing public perceptions of Mexican art: a large loan exhibition of around 1,300 objects, Mexican Arts (October 13–November 9), funded by the Carnegie Foundation and organized by the American Federation of Arts, and a smaller exhibition of prints (October 12–November 9). This was the first time The Met displayed Mexican material in such abundance. The impetus for the main exhibition was political, insofar that the organizers wanted to present a positive view of Mexico after the revolution to appease relations between the two countries. Showcasing fine, decorative, and applied arts, Mexican Arts ultimately traveled to thirteen other venues—twice as many as originally planned. The exhibition included prints, books, periodicals, and children’s drawings that, in the catalogue, are collectively regarded as expressive of the cultural efflorescence nurtured by the revolution. There was also a large group of drawings, prints, and paintings by twentieth-century artists, including Charlot, and copies of periodicals he edited and to which he contributed.
The colossal success of Mexican Arts provided perfect complements to the modest print exhibition that ran concurrently. In a brief note in the October 1930 issue of the Bulletin, Alice Newlin points out that the works were mainly from The Met collection and highlights the importance of Posada and prints by “second generation” Mexican artists, such as Orozco and Rufino Tamayo (1899–1991). She goes on to identify specific works, for example “the fiery woodcuts of David Alfaro Siqueiros and Xavier Guerrero, issued in the labor paper, El Machete.”[16] Charlot’s prints were also included, and Newlin stresses how important Maya archaeological excavations were for his art. From the outset, Charlot was closely involved with the exhibition. He helped Newlin with the note for the Bulletin and lent seventeen works from his own collection: three Siqueiros prints for El Machete and seven works each by Manilla and Posada.
The exhibition galvanized Charlot’s continued support for the Department of Prints. On October 19, 1931, the Museum trustees accepted his most important gift to date—forty-three prints, eight posters, and five books/portfolios by leading artists, among them, Alfredo Zalce (1908–2003), Rufino Tamayo, Emilio Amero, Carlos Mérida (1891–1984), and Leopoldo Méndez (1902–1969). The expanding roster of artists and range of different types of materials reflected in the gift are notable. One highlight is a portfolio of thirteen woodcuts that Siqueiros carved on scraps of wood while in Mexico City’s penitentiary after being arrested for his association with the Communist Party. Upon his release, he was forced into exile in Taxco (southwest of Mexico City), where he collated the woodcuts into a portfolio.
As part of the gift, The Met also acquired a group of remarkably rare posters, with one by Fernández Ledesma advertising an exhibition of photographs by Agustín Jiménez (1901–1974) and another by Carlos Orozco Romero (1896–1984) warning of the dangers of fetal alcohol syndrome. During the early 1930s, Charlot was also advising The Met on acquisitions. In a letter to Ivins, Charlot presents (1904–1983) as “an American painter much identified with Mexico” and describes a proof of a lithographic self-portrait by Rivera that he had obtained from the artist himself.[17] Ivins later agreed to acquire the Rivera work.
Returning to New York in late 1931, Charlot continued teaching at the Art Students League. Two years later, he began working at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, before heading back to New York in 1934. Charlot’s Picture Book of mainly Mexican themes was published in an edition of five hundred in 1933, and The Met purchased a copy; he also presented four volumes of progressive proofs for the book to the Museum. In 1933, five of his works were included in the MoMA exhibition American Sources of Modern Art, which explored art of the ancient Americas and its contemporary resonances. In March 1936, an exhibition of Charlot’s work was held at Columbia University, where he delivered a series of lectures a year later. During this time, Charlot maintained close relations with Met curators through regular correspondence and gifts.[18] Charlot’s attachment to Mexico largely defined his artistic credentials, and at The Met, his work has always been filed in the Mexican section. Incoming gifts from Charlot included miscellaneous items, such as a copy of André Salmon’s Le calumet (1920) with woodcuts by André Derain, a catalogue of Charlot’s prints (1936) with pictograph-like lithographic illustrations printed by Albert Carman (formerly printer in residence at The Met), and Carlos Mérida’s portfolio of surrealist inspired abstract lithographs titled Motivos.
Meanwhile, interest in Mexican culture in the United States continued unabated. The exhibition Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art, held at MoMA in 1940 (May 15–September 30), displayed an enormous number of ancient, colonial, folk, and modern objects; the works filled the entire gallery space and continued into the courtyard with pre-Columbian stone sculpture. Charlot’s color lithograph Mother and Child (1934) was included in the modern section. The roster of Charlot’s artistic and academic activities during the late 1930s and 1940s demonstrates how embedded he had become in the cultural life of the city.
Printmaking at the Vanguard
By the early 1930s the appeal of muralism had cooled broadly due to the fact that it was seen as representative of a revolutionary government that had revealed its many failings. The Mexican writer Octavio Paz described it as “the painted apologia of the ideological dictatorship of an armed bureaucracy.”[19] Artists like Charlot and Orozco, who diverted their attention from murals to explore printmaking, were followed by a slightly younger generation that included figures such as Méndez and Francisco Dosamantes (1911–1986). Printmaking became the dominant conduit for addressing political and social concerns, a reality reflected in the establishment of artists’ collectives committed to promoting social action. These developments should be viewed against the backdrop of the educational programs supported by the National Revolutionary Party (founded in 1929), implemented through broadcasts, the social missions for campesinos, and other similar initiatives that reflected revolutionary ideology.
The Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR; League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) was founded in late 1933 with close ties to Mexico’s Communist Party. Counted in its membership were Méndez, Luis Arenal (1907–1985), José Chávez Morado (1909–2002), Guerrero, O’Higgins, Antonio Pujol (1913– 1995), and Everardo Ramírez (1906–1992). Reflecting the progressive policies of President Lázaro Cárdenas, the LEAR supported anticapitalist and anti-imperialist struggles that were voiced through its magazine Frente a Frente. Méndez created a print for the cover of its first issue in November 1934. As a cultural force that had considerable influence on education in Mexico, the LEAR sent exhibitions across the country, organized lectures and meetings, and established schools for workers.
One notable project was a series of textbooks illustrated by LEAR artists to teach literacy to workers taking night classes. By 1937, internal differences and political tensions had resulted in its demise, and in its wake came the Taller Editorial de Gráfica Popular (TEGP), founded in spring 1937 by such artists as Arenal, Raúl Anguiano (1915–2006), O’Higgins, and Zalce, some of whom had been members of the LEAR. In the following year, led by Méndez, the TEGP became the Taller de Gráfica Popular (TGP; Workshop of Popular Graphic Art), the longest lasting artists’ collective. For its activism and political intrigue, as well as the number of artists involved, it is one of the most fascinating groups in the history of twentieth-century printmaking. Indeed, the TGP developed into an immensely productive organization that exerted influence on an international level. Its statutes state that it was “founded with the aim of stimulating graphic arts production in the interests of the Mexican people, and to this end seeks to bring together the greatest number of artists in a task of constant self improvement through collective production.”[20] Drawing on the tradition of Posada’s illustrated broadsheets and the bold graphics of El Machete, the TGP produced material that supported trade unionism, agrarian rights, politics, and especially socialist education.
Posters were among the most striking materials created during this period. Many examples relate to the struggle against fascism and the suffering brought on by the Spanish Civil War, both of which resulted in refugees arriving in Mexico. Other posters sponsored by the Departamento Autónomo de Prensa y Publicidad (DAPP; Department of Press and Propaganda) advertised exhibitions and free night courses in printmaking and bookbinding.[21]
Like El Machete ten years earlier, these posters were pasted in the streets and other public places. Writing about an exhibition he curated in 1936 for the LEAR, Fernández Ledesma eloquently describes the efficacy of posters: “The poster is the theater, the mural decoration and the book that cannot wait to be visited: it goes out into the street, and from the wall shouts its message to the passersby. The voice of a good poster is always heard.”[22]
Flyers, books, and portfolios of prints were also created by the TGP. Printed on cheap paper and intended for distribution in the street and at events, posters and flyers addressed such issues as the oppression of workers and exploitative foreign intervention. Charlot knew many of the TGP members, and he acquired their prints while he was based in the United States. One of Charlot’s gifts from 1940—a portfolio of seven lithographs by Méndez that depict murdered schoolteachers in rural Mexico—exemplifies the range of subjects and formats addressed by TGP artists.
Return to Mexico
In early 1945, Charlot received a major break in the form of a Guggenheim Foundation fellowship to research and write the manuscript that became The Mexican Mural Renaissance, 1920–1925 (1963). The fellowship enabled him to return to Mexico, where he remained with his family until the summer of 1947. In April 1945, Carlos Mérida wrote to Charlot, noting that his return was greatly anticipated and would be celebrated by all of his friends. Back in familiar territory, Charlot renewed friendships with artists and kindled new ones, spending time with Mérida, Zalce, Federico Cantú (1908–1989), and O’Higgins. He also used the facilities at the TGP to print, for example, lithographs for Mexihkanantli (Nahuatl for “Mexican mother”), the progressive proofs for which made their way to The Met.
In April 1945, before setting out, Charlot wrote to Mayor suggesting that The Met provide him with a “buying allowance to get on the spot whatever I think would be an addition to the Print collection.”[23] Mayor passed the letter to Ivins with an annotation explaining that Charlot “might well get us excellent things that would be impossible to come by otherwise”—a clear endorsement of the trust they had established during the previous decade. The recommendation set in motion a sequence of events that culminated in a significant group of Mexican prints and books coming to The Met, thereby creating one of the most comprehensive museum collections of this material in the world.
Relishing the opportunity to acquire work and confident in the knowledge that The Met supported his judgment, Charlot immediately set to his task. The works of art purchased by Charlot caused great excitement upon their arrival at the Museum. Mayor identified individual pieces of merit: the 1756 engraving on silk and a copy of poet Bernardo Ortiz de Montellano’s El sombrerón (1946) with the original drawings and hand-colored proof impressions of prints interleaved. In late February 1947, Charlot wrote to Mayor announcing that he had spent almost all the money and would soon return to the United States. In June, Charlot and his family traveled to California, and in September, he began a brief tenure as director of Colorado Springs Arts Center. That same year, he was also guest curator at the Brooklyn Museum, selecting one hundred prints for American Printmaking, 1913–1947: A Retrospective Exhibition (November 18–December 16).
Mexican Prints at The Met
The influx of almost nine hundred items in 1946 transformed the Museum’s collection. The range and quality of material are remarkable, amounting to an unequaled representation of Mexican printmaking from the eighteenth through the mid-twentieth centuries. The greatest concentration of work is from the twentieth century, clearly reflecting what was available: broadsides illustrating notable events; popular prints, some with satirical content; political and advertising posters, many of which promote educational courses and exhibitions; print portfolios; children’s and other books; song sheets; devotional images; and symbolist works. Much of the art, including large and potentially fragile posters and newspapers, survives in pristine condition because it came directly from artists and workshops instead of through intermediaries.
A different buyer might have focused on “fine art” prints by well-known artists (Rivera or Orozco, for example), or the vibrant posters published by the TGP. Charlot’s acquisitions, however, went beyond this material and included more obscure work that conveyed a comprehensive history of printmaking in Mexico. Some of the images directly criticized American foreign policy that resulted in unwanted intervention and the expropriation of Mexico’s natural resources. The incorporation of these prints into The Met collection reflects a notable legacy of egalitarian collecting practices and Charlot’s passion for Mexico and its art, his generosity as a donor, and his role as an indefatigable agent and negotiator.
This essay is adapted from the summer 2024 Bulletin, which accompanies the exhibition Mexican Prints at the Vanguard on view through January 5, 2025
Notes