The fantastic bestiary of the Mexican artist Francisco Toledo walks freely these days through the rooms of the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca (IAGO). A new exhibition inaugurated this Friday by the most influential creator in Mexico brings together 42 pieces, including lithographs, metals and woodcuts, that show the evolution of Toledo and his work with the experimentation of various techniques. The exhibition presents works exhibited for the first time to the public, which are a journey not only through Toledo’s passion for fantastic animals, but also the traditions of native peoples and eroticism. “It is an important exhibition because they are pieces that had not been seen together before, the interesting thing is that many are color lithographs, which is peculiar in the master’s work,” explains Jou Morales, IAGO exhibition coordinator, by phone.
The exhibition, which will be open until March, is an effort between the IAGO and the collection of Francisco Toledo. AC Morales comments that the works present some work processes and experiments that Toledo carried out during a decade, between 1976 and 1987, a time of enormous production by an artist who explored all visual media and created more than 9,000 works in various formats. “This group of works exhibits the development of the master and his experimentation in graphics, it shows an evolution of his work. There is a very strong change and a very interesting experimentation between the use of technique and the concept,” says Morales.
The curator says that part of this experimentation was related to Toledo’s exploration of new techniques. When he was not satisfied with a piece, he would delete it or intervene, adding or removing things. “I was always exploring things and when I learned something new I applied it to whatever I had at hand. He worked on many techniques at the same time. A series is exhibited that shows how he erased, intervened, made scratches, and handled colors; Each work in that series is unique and different from the previous one, despite using the same plate,” explains Morales.
Toledo (1940-2019), considered Mexico’s most international artist, died in September 2019 after suffering complications from cancer. His death left a huge void in Mexican art, although the artist was responsible for educating new generations through schools he created in his native state, where he is revered, but also with activities for the promotion of art and culture and land protection. Among his legacy is a fantastic world that marked contemporary Mexican art. In the IAGO exhibition you can see that imaginary bestiary that Toledo was passionate about, fantastic animals and others such as toads, crocodiles, opossums with human gifts, pigs, lizards, fish, rabbits or dogs that he recreated in his abstract style. One of those pieces would seem like simple scratches at first glance, but when the viewer moves away from it they discover the figure of a grasshopper. “I wanted to be an illustrator of myths,” said Toledo.
“My life has gone through many stages. At first I wanted to be linked to my community, there were oral myths, traditions, stories; I thought I could be the illustrator of those myths. Over time I loaded up with more information, I visited cities and museums; Picasso, Klee, Miró, Dubuffet, I lived in Europe, I traveled to Spain, I met Tàpies, Saura… My art is a mixture of what I have seen and other things that I don’t know where they come from. I have been influenced by primitive art, but also by crazy people, mentally ill people and, above all, Rufino Tamayo, from Oaxaca, with whom I was very close in Paris. There is a treatment of color and material that brings me closer to it. I loved him very much. Thanks to Rufino I was able to stay in Paris. He got me a scholarship; I was going for a few months and I stayed for four years,” Toledo told this newspaper in an interview published in 2015.
Eroticism is also present in the exhibition. “There are abstract woodcuts, it is a very subtle eroticism, because the image is not explicit. One of them shows scratches and colors, but when you move away a little you can see a phallus,” says Morales, the curator. The works also bring together self-portraits of Toledo, but with the artist’s abstract particularities. “It is a very important exhibition for new generations who are interested in graphic issues. It is important that they see it, because they are works that would normally be seen in other parts of Mexico or the world,” Morales acknowledges. Many of these works were created in workshops abroad, such as the famous Atelier 17, founded in New York by the painter and printmaker Stanley William Hayter. “Some of these pieces were already exhibited as finished works, but seeing them within this group allows us to understand the development that Francisco Toledo had in his work, which is another way to get closer to his processes,” says the curator.