Melancholy defines revolutions; the triumph is always followed by the terror or the bureaucracy. But before that inevitability asserts itself, there is always an exuberant conviction that it will not happen again. In contrast to this righteous delusion, ink pressed onto paper can be, in itself, an act of defiance which asserts that the struggle against injustice never ends. And so it is in the work of the Taller de Gráfica Popular offered by this comprehensive and challenging exhibition.

Left: 1. Alberto Beltrán, Vida y drama de México: 20 años de vida del Taller de Gráfica Popular (Life and Drama of Mexico: 20 Years of the Life of the Taller de Gráfica Popular), 1957. See ‘Footnotes’ for complete citations. xxxxxx There is probably no way to strip the word “agitprop” of its dismissive and doctrinaire associations. But what is essential to the artists represented here is their activist commitment. They were not simply working to record the oppression of the society in which they lived; they were providing -with their basic red and black palette of outrage – a visual equivalent for a community’s political identity.

Right:  2. Isidoro Ocampo, 1o de julio – 1936 y el enano cobarde y asesino autor de la matanza huyo de Yucatán (July 1 – 1936 and the Cowardly Dwarf and Murderous Author of the Massacre Fled Yucatán), 1938.

The notion of the popular in these works is grounded in both accessibility and self- recognition. They are a secular version of Gothic stained glass narratives where the sacred meanings of the past are given the clothing and landscape of the present. It may be that an arte para el pueblo – an art of and for the people – is a doomed enterprise, but the thrill of a moment in which its promise seemed realizable can still be read in these prints.

Even the bleakest of the images collected here are full of the conviction that change is not only possible, but imminent. In Isidoro Ocampo’s , 1o de julio – 1936 y el enano cobarde y asesino autor de la matanza huyo de Yucatán (July 1 – 1936 and the Cowardly Dwarf and Murderous Author of the Massacre Fled Yucatán), the long history of slaughter is overseen by a malevolent Wizard of Oz, who is defeated by his caricature. Francisco Dosamantes depicts the ca. 1939-40Víctima del fascismo (nina muerta) (Victim of Fascism [Dead Girl]) as if at a velatorio, a public wake with an open casket, although here it is a presentation of evidence in a crime, like Emmett Till, the young black man murdered in Mississippi in 1955, whose mother refused to have his mutilated corpse hidden under a coffin lid.

Left: 3. José Chávez Morado, El clero y la prensa (The Clergy and the Press), 1939.

An inheritance of German expressionism and the skeleton satires of Otto Dix is acknowledged in Everardo Ramírez’s, La guerra fascista (The Fascist War), ca. 1944, where the threats to the local community are seen as international in scale. José Chavéz Morado, El clero y la prensa (Clergy and the Press), 1939, is a bitter cartoon of the betrayal of ideals by institutions which would have been expected to defend them.

For the audience to these images here in the United States, the graphic commentaries on this country’s role in the politics of Latin America during the last half of the 20th century depict some unsettling truths. The self-interested manipulations that passed for foreign policy, with the specific case of U.S. complicity in the  overthrow of a democratically elected government in Guatemala, are dramatized in Adolfo Mexiac’s El títere (The Puppet) of 1955. In Libertad (Liberty), also a work of the 1950’s,  Francisco Mora reveals the dismaying reality beneath the democratic illusions of the North, looming at the border. Here, a decapitated Statue of LIberty is replaced by a sluttish dominatrix in drag, propped up by racism and military power, accompanied by a Dia de los Muertos skull emerging from an A-bomb cloud.

Right: 4. Francisco Mora, Libertad (Liberty), 1950s.

At the time when these images were being produced, what was happening in Central and South America  was largely invisible to those in the north, except for the harmless exotic scenes of National Geographic, and for Walt Disney, whose 1944 cartoon The Three Caballeros with its character of Panchito Pistoles, a Mexican rooster with guns, was a nonsense antonym to the critiques of cultural imperialism rendered by the Taller de Gráfica Popular.

Little has changed in our present relationship with the political art of Latin America. The work of the contemporary Mexican artists’ collective, the Assembly of Revolutionary Artists of Oaxaca (ASARO), is little known in this country. The existence of the remarkable prints on view here at Yale is due to the passion of two collectors, along with the commitment of enlightened curators, but this is a rare conjunction of people and objects. And, while it is important that the history of the Taller de Gráfica Popular be preserved, what is to be found in these galleries is only the memory of revolution.

Left: 5. Pablo O’Higgins, Buenos vecinos, buenos amigos (Good Neighbors, Good Friends), 1944.

It is true that we are at a moment in our own time when, through the murders of the satirical artists of Charlie Hebdo, we have been reminded of the power of printed pictures to both enrage and celebrate. But a world where freedom is not simply a matter of purchasing power seems as far away as ever.

By Stephen Kobasa, Contributing Writer

Vida y Drama de México: Prints from the Monroe E. Price and Aimée Brown Price Collection

through February 1, 2015

Yale University Art Gallery

1111 Chapel Street New Haven, CT

203-432-0600

www.artgallery.yale.edu

Footnotes:

1. Alberto Beltrán (Mexican, 1923–2002), ‘Vida y drama de México: 20 años de vida del Taller de Gráfica Popular’ (Life and Drama of Mexico: 20 Years of the Life of the Taller de Gráfica Popular), 1957. Linocut, 27 1/2 x 18 3/4″. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Monroe E. Price, b.a. 1960, ll.b. 1964, and Aimée Brown Price, m.a. 1963, ph.d. 1972. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ SOMAAP, Mexico City.

2. Isidoro Ocampo (Mexican, 1910–1983), ‘1o de julio – 1936 y el enano cobarde y asesino autor de la matanza huyo de Yucatán’ (July 1 – 1936 and the Cowardly Dwarf and Murderous Author of the Massacre Fled Yucatán), 1938. Lithograph, 19 1/2 x 25″. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Monroe E. Price, b.a. 1960, ll.b. 1964, and Aimée Brown Price, m.a. 1963, ph.d. 1972.

Right: 6. Leopoldo Méndez, 1o de mayo . . . Comité Nacional de la Confederación de Trabajadores de México (May 1 . . . National Committee of the Confederation of Mexican Workers), 1947.

3. José Chávez Morado (Mexican, 1909–2002), ‘El clero y la prensa’ (The Clergy and the Press), 1939. Lithograph, 13 3/4 x 17 11/16 in”. Yale University Art Gallery, Promised gift of Monroe E. Price, B.A. 1960, LL.B. 1964, and Aimée Brown Price, M.A. 1963, Ph.D. 1972. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City.

4. Francisco Mora (Mexican, 1922–2002), ‘Libertad’ (Liberty), 1950s. Linocut, 19 3/4 x 14 11/16″. Yale University Art Gallery, Lent by Monroe E. Price, B.A. 1960, LL.B. 1964, and Aimée Brown Price, M.A. 1963, Ph.D. 1972. Art © Catlett Mora Family Trust/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY.

5. Pablo O’Higgins (American, honorary Mexican citizen, 1904–1983), ‘Buenos vecinos, buenos amigos’ (Good Neighbors, Good Friends), 1944. Offset lithograph, 17 15/16 x 25 3/4″. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Monroe E. Price, b.a. 1960, ll.b. 1964, and Aimée Brown Price, m.a. 1963, ph.d. 1972. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City.

6. Leopoldo Méndez (Mexican, 1902–1969), ‘1o de mayo . . . Comité Nacional de la Confederación de Trabajadores de México’ (May 1 . . . National Committee of the Confederation of Mexican Workers), 1947. Linocut, 32 1/2 x 24 1/2″. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Monroe E. Price,  b.a. 1960, ll.b. 1964, and Aimée Brown Price, m.a. 1963, ph.d. 1972. © 2014 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SOMAAP, Mexico City.