Stanford University Libraries
Stanford, California
October 25, 2002
EXHIBITION: José Guadalupe Posada and the Taller
de Gráfica Popular: Mexican Popular Prints
DATES: November 1, 2002 – March 15, 2003
CONTACT: Vanessa Kam, 650-723-9523, fax 650-723-8690;
dvkam@sulmail.stanford.edu
The Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections,
is pleased to announce the exhibition José Guadalupe Posada
and the Taller de Gráfica Popular: Mexican Popular Prints.
This show celebrates the work of two Mexican graphic art giants:
Posada (1852–1913), perhaps best known for his calaveras
(skeletal caricatures) that appear during the Día de los
muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations beginning each year on
November 1, and artists of the Taller de Gráfica Popular
(TGP, Workshop for Popular Graphic Art), which formed in 1937.
With an emphasis on documenting Posada’s influence
on younger generations of artists working in post-Revolutionary
Mexico, the exhibition will feature prints, broadsheets, posters,
photographs, printing blocks, and rare illustrated books.
José Guadalupe Posada and the Taller de Gráfica
Popular: Mexican Popular Prints will be on view at Stanford University’s
Cecil H. Green Library, Peterson Gallery, second floor of the
Bing Wing from November 1, 2002 through March 15, 2003. The exhibition
is free and open to the public.
Born in the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico, Posada demonstrated
an early talent for drawing, taught lithography, and made a living
as an illustrator of magazines, books, and commercial products.
In 1888 he moved to Mexico City to join the printing shop of Antonio
Vanegas Arroyo. It is there that Posada produced thousands
of illustrations for popular broadsheets, some dedicated to sensationalistic
themes ranging from heinous murders to natural and man-made disasters,
and others to daily life in turn-of-the-century Mexico.
Posada’s imagery was aimed at the urban working classes,
shedding light on the struggles of the underdog and the downtrodden
while exposing the habits of Mexico’s middle and upper class
members to his sharp satirical wit. Posada created the bulk
of these broadsheets under the regime of the Mexican dictator
Porfirio Díaz, keeping his satire in check to minimize
the risk censorship or imprisonment.
Posada’s impact on the work of the TGP will be highlighted
in the exhibition. Several TGP artists acknowledged Posada
as having a strong influence on their work, and were clearly inspired
by his ability to reach the masses through the medium of printmaking
and his unique, dramatic style of representing both extraordinary
and ordinary elements of everyday life in Mexico.
Founded in 1937 by Leopoldo Méndez and other members of
a dissolved artists’ collective, the TGP used the graphic
arts as a means of educating and raising the social and political
consciousness of the largely uneducated rural working classes.
Artists of the TGP were political activists bound by a common
allegiance to the social justice and agrarian reform goals of
the Mexican Revolution. TGP artists produced hundreds of
prints, posters, handouts, and leaflets representing a myriad
of political causes. Included in the exhibition are striking
images focused on denouncing fascism, imperialism, and the oppression
of the peasant classes, and on promoting workers rights, literacy
campaigns, and oil expropriation.
PLEASE NOTE: Images to accompany this press release are
available upon request. For images, and further information
about the exhibition, please contact Becky Fischbach at 650-725-1020
or via e-mail at efischba@stanford.edu
LOCATION: Peterson Gallery, Green Library
Bing Wing, Second Floor
Stanford University, Stanford, CA
HOURS: Gallery hours from November 1 through December
13, 2002 and January 7 through March 15, 2003 are Monday through
Saturday 10 am to 6 pm, Sunday 1 to 6 pm. For library hours
between December 14 and January 6, please call 650-723-9108.
