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Exhibition Dates: September 12, 2024–January 5, 2025
Location: The Met Fifth Avenue, Galleries 691–93
Featuring more than 130 woodcuts, lithographs, and screen prints, Mexican Prints at the Vanguard will highlight rarely seen works from the Met Collection and explore the cultural, social, and political impact of printmaking as a medium
A dynamic series of English- and Spanish-language programming will include live musical performances, art-making activities, and Met Expert Talks sharing untold stories behind the works on view
(New York, August 23, 2024)— Opening September 12, 2024, at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mexican Prints at the Vanguard 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.
The exhibition is made possible by Jessie and Charles Price.
Additional support is provided by The Schiff Foundation.
“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.”
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.
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.
Exhibition Overview
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 will look 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.
Credits and Related Content
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard is curated by Mark McDonald, Curator, Department of Drawings and Prints, The Met.
This exhibition is accompanied by the Fall 2024 English and Spanish editions of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin.
The Bulletin is made possible in part by Allston Chapman and The Met Americas Council.
The Metropolitan's quarterly Bulletin program is supported in part by the Lila Acheson Wallace Fund for The Metropolitan Museum of Art, established by the cofounder of Reader’s Digest.
The Met will host a variety of dynamic exhibition-related educational and public programs offering the opportunity for deep engagement with the works displayed. On September 27, poet Mónica de la Torre, artist Daniel Guzmán, and independent curator Gabriela Rangel will participate in a panel discussion exploring the resonance of art as a form of resistance, moderated by Miriam M. Basilio Gaztambide, Associate Professor of Art History and Museum Studies at New York University. On September 21, The Met will hold a poster-making Studio Workshop, and on October 12, there will be a musical performance organized with Real de Mexico Mariachi and an Open Studio session featuring a free, drop-in art-making activity. Both studio programs are organized in collaboration with New Latin Wave and will be led by printmaker María Verónica San Martín. A series of Met Expert Talks—on September 17, November 21, and December 19—will surface insights and untold stories from Met insiders about works in the exhibition. Mexican Prints at the Vanguard will be featured during The Met Fall Fling Festival on October 19 as well as in popular Met programs such as Artists on Artworks, Teen Fridays, Met Signs in the Studio, Educator Workshops, and Family Afternoons. Spanish-language programming, including Met Expert Talks and a Día de los Muertos program at The Met Cloisters on October 13, will accompany the exhibition to connect with the New York City community and celebrate Hispanic/Latine Heritage Month.
Mexican Art Across The Met Collection
The extraordinary range of work and diversity of creativity from across Mexico—from antiquity to the present—is addressed throughout the Museum and in many curatorial departments. Works from Mexico, including exquisite sculptures and paintings from the region before 1600, will be featured prominently in the new galleries devoted to major artistic traditions of the Arts of the Ancient Americas, located in The Met’s Michael C. Rockefeller Wing, which will reopen after a major renovation and reenvisioning in the spring of 2025. The collection of ancient American art represents almost 5,000 years of history from North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean. Additionally, works from Mexico and works created by artists from Mexico are found across the institution within curatorial collection areas including European Paintings, The American Wing, Arms and Armor, Asian Art, The Costume Institute, Drawings and Prints, European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, Modern and Contemporary Art, Musical Instruments, Photographs, and The Robert Lehman Collection. The Met continues to expand its holdings of Mexican prints and books and recently announced a gift from the Pinkowitz Collection of more than 300 prints by artists from or working in Mexico, a selection of which will be on view beginning February 5, 2025.
The exhibition is featured on The Met website as well as on social media using the hashtag #MetMexicanPrints.
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August 23, 2024
Contact: Margaret-Anne Logan
Communications@metmuseum.org
Image caption: Gabriel Fernández Ledesma (Mexican, 1900–1983). 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)
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