The Swedish artist Per Anderson (Malmö, 1946) arrived in Veracruz with a mission: teach lithography. The photographer Carlos Jurado, one of the founders of the Faculty of Plastic Arts of the Veracruz University, had invited him in 1974, but he soon understood that the project was almost impossible. Mexico did not have lithographic stones, machinery, paper or special ink required by this artistic activity. Anderson should start everything from scratch. “A long trip begins, a long search for options. They took several years to configure a clear perspective to finally declare the Mexican lithography, ”says the artist with a sky blue, of a sweet, sweet, in a perfect Spanish.
Anderson was last weekend in Mexico City to participate in the Exhibitions of ACME Salon, one of the artistic initiatives that brings together dozens of creators in the context of art week. Veracruz was the guest this year of the Hall, a platform created to give visibility to new artists. The state exposure, cured by the writer Rafael Toriz, was entitled Contours hallucinatedin honor of a piece of Anderson, a lithographic image of Veracruz’s geography, imagined from a hot air balloon. “Writing the name of Per Anderson sums Enchanted territory, ”said Toriz of the Nordic creator.
That delighted territory soon captivated Anderson, who would put all his effort into carrying out the company that had been entrusted to him. As we said, it was not an easy task. Although Mexico took off as a modern and industrial country, there was still a lot of delay in certain aspects of university education, mainly in the states, far from the capitalism of the capital. The traditional lithographic stone to develop its courses should be brought from the limestone of Solnhofen, in Germany, where for 200 years it has been extracted and sent to half the world to make lithography. That for the time was very expensive. In addition, lithographic tacas had to be imported from the United States, special inks from Paris or Chicago, as well as paper, also imported from Europe. Anderson, however, did not shrink, as they say in Mexico. It was not allowed to be reduced by these difficulties.
The Swedish got to work. Perhaps the impulse was given by the Scandinavian tradition, whose inhabitants must permanently fight against the elements, or the past of his family, mother of St. Petersburg and father of Estonia, who fled to Sweden during World War II and began a new life. The fact is that Anderson took the initiative and began to investigate. Soon he knew that the Mexican marble, composed of calcium carbonate just like the lithographic stone brought from Germany, could be useful for his company. With his team he also began to design and build their own presses, they learned to make leather rollers – ”that is not an easy thing, because you have to perform a practically invisible seam without marking lines in the impressions,” he explains – they manufactured Also the lithographic ink, another big mess, because it is almost alchemy, to use very volatile fluids, and twice there were fires in the laboratory. There was the obstacle of paper. “To dedicate to playing paper was also a very complicated task, since in Mexico there was no history of what in Europe and the United States were paper mills, where it was done by hand. In fact, the Spanish crown determinantly prohibited the establishment of paper mills in all colonies, throughout America. Then, recovering these techniques took time and work resulted in your own technology, ”explains the artist.
It is not that Anderson has brought the lithography to Mexico. This artistic form came to the country in 1826, introduced by the Italian painter and lithographer Claudio Linati, pupil of the French painter Jacques-Louis David. Linati established the first lithographic press in the country. “But as soon as stone lithography technology was undone as a real option and is converted into offset, its mark is lost very soon, not only in Mexico, but in the entire world,” says Anderson. He had to teach his students the old technique, in addition to the drawing, so he created a whole lithographic project from scratch. “Keeping the stone lithography technique is an exclusive need of the artistic community,” he says.
Anderson has formed several generations of artists over five decades, many of them have exposed in the main galleries of Mexico and abroad and, although that fills it with pride, which feels how its greatest achievement is the cultural center La Ceiba Graphic, located in an old Coatepec farm, Veracruz. The teacher could no longer contain so much creation in his workshop of the Faculty of Plastic Arts and felt that the State needed to house so many artists who came from other parts of the country attracted by the magic that the Swedish had created. The state government gave him the old estate 20 years ago and he worked on restoring it and turning it into a community of artists. “We develop it under the principle of being able to sustain it with its own resources, which is very unusual within the cultural concert in Mexico. From the first moment we knew that if we failed to sustain it with own resources, each sexennium was going to remove all the budget and risk all the activity, ”says Anderson.
In this workshop he and his pupils began to produce all the technology they needed: lithographic presses, enable stones, manufacture inks, rollers, produce the paper. “Everything has to be very well managed. Now we are well grouped as artists to make us not be bankrupt. The graphic CEIBA project consists of residences, courses, sale of work that occurs there and sale of equipment and materials that we manufacture, ”says the artist with pride. Nothing bad for that Swedish artist who landed more than 50 years in the country with a company that seemed impossible.
Anderson proudly shows his work, all the precious images created in his workshop, he speaks with joy of his students and at a time of the conversation he takes out his mobile and teaches a video that the Spanish writer Irene Vallejo, author of the Super Surves, sends her The infinity in a reedwho expresses his desire to travel to Veracruz and know the magical community created by him. “It gives me a lot of happiness that we have achieved something beautiful, see that it works. What has sustained me is the love for the state of Veracruz, a scenario where I have seen myself in depth, ”says the artist with a sky blue, of a sweet, sweet, in a perfect Spanish.