The Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York City is showcasing the exhibit Mexican Prints at the Vanguard, an exploration of Mexico’s rich tradition of printmaking, or estampado.
On display through January 2025, the exhibit features over 130 works, including woodcuts, lithographs and screen prints by artists such as José Guadalupe Posada (creator of the “Catrina”), Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and Leopoldo Méndez.
“The exhibition explores how prints were central to the 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 Met said in a press release.
Most of The Met’s collection of Mexican prints came from the French-born artist Jean Charlot, who spent decades in Mexico. 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 over 2,000 prints in Mexico.
The collection reflects The Met’s pioneering recognition of Mexico’s artistic renaissance, well before the movement captured global attention.
Printmaking has been central to Mexican art and culture since the Spanish conquistadors arrived with religious woodcuts in the 1500s. Following the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920), artists turned to printmaking to address social and political unrest, voicing resistance to a range of issues such as the rise of fascism around the world. They also used printmaking to reproduce Mexican murals, announce upcoming art exhibitions and conferences, create prints for the press and document Mexican dress and customs.
“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,” Max Hollein, The Met’s director and Chief Executive Officer said in a statement.
The prints range from an 18th-century Virgin of Guadalupe on white silk to a number of colorful silk-screens by the Guatemalan-born artist Carlos Mérida that document regional costumes and dances. But the largest share of the exhibition pertains to two main periods — the late 19th century, when Posada introduced the Catrina, Mexico’s iconic cartoonish skeleton, and the early 20th century, when artists like Rivera worked for El Machete, a Communist Party-aligned newspaper.
Mexican Prints at the Vanguard is curated in six chronologically organized sections across three galleries. One is entirely dedicated to Posada, regarded by many as the father of printmaking in Mexico, and his contemporaries.
Printmaking remains a popular and widely practiced art form in Mexico today.
With reports from The New York Times
