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Germany and Mexico: the same vision of art as a political tool

2022-03-22T21:15:38.537Z


The Reina Sofía museum narrates an unknown episode in history based on 450 works created in the first half of the 20th century


A visitor to the exhibition 'From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett' at the Reina Sofía museum. Photographic archive of the Reina Sofía museum

There are periods in the history of art that have been analyzed and disseminated down to their most insignificant details.

In the 20th century, for example, almost all the action seems to have taken place between Paris and New York.

Exhibitions and research have moved little away from that limited geographical setting.

However, there are still many chapters of the general narrative that have been forgotten or crushed by the weight of the institutional canon.

It takes the perseverance of historians such as the German Benjamin HD Buchloh (Cologne, 80 years old) to make known an episode as hard and difficult as the one that narrates the evolution and weight of graphic art as a tool for social vindication during the first half of the 20th century in Germany and Mexico.

This is the theme that is told in the exhibition

From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to

Catlett

,

which has just been inaugurated at the Reina Sofía museum and can be seen until August 29.

More than 450 works occupy nine rooms on the third floor of the Sabatini building in an exhibition in which numerous public and private institutions from around the world have collaborated, such as the Metropolitan and MoMa in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the United States Library of Congress or the Pompidou Center in Paris.

More information

The ignored and the essentials shine in the new collection of the Reina Sofía

The first room dates back to the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th.

Under the dim light imposed by the fragility of the material on display, a selection of the work of two referents of Mexican and German graphic art is shown: José Guadalupe Posada and Käthe Kollwitz.

The lithographs and woodcuts of him and her coincide in the most heartbreaking drama, although Posada preferred to express his feelings in the skulls and caricatures that he published in the newspapers of the time or in pamphlets destined for a mostly illiterate population.

Käthe Kollwitz's work is a cry against war and violence, a feeling that marked her life after the death of her son during the First World War.

Self-portraits of her along with scenes in which it is difficult for her to distinguish limbs piled up in a gutter mark the majority of her work.

'Skull the bicycles' (1900), by José Guadalupe Posada. Andrés Blaisten Collection

Manuel Borja-Villel, director of the Reina Sofía, explains in this introductory part of the tour what German and Mexican graphic artists of this period have in common and why they are presented together in an exhibition: “They share the same atmosphere time to deal with social problems.

She works with a profound drama caused by the death of her son.

He dares to do anything, even drawing transvestites to a group of politicians of the time, among whom was the president's son-in-law.

'Frontal self-portrait' (1923), by Käthe Kollwitz.

Particular collection

With the rise of National Socialism to power, a large part of the artists with social concerns pack their bags and flee the country.

Many end up in Paris, but others make the leap to America fleeing from the death that industrially spreads throughout Europe.

“Many are Jews and almost all leftists who want to merge their traditions and knowledge with that of the Mexicans.

They achieved a different universal language to what had been known until then”, explains Borja-Villel.

The director of the museum believes that this chapter of the history of art had not been thoroughly studied "because many believed that graphic work was a minor art and that other worlds did not fit beyond cubism or abstraction."

Benjamin HD Buchloh has curated the exhibition together with fellow historian Michelle Harewood (47 years old, Barbados, USA).

The second part of the tour exhibits the German graphic production that followed the first war around three well-known geniuses such as Max Beckmann (1884-1950), Otto Dix (1891-1969) and George Grosz (1893-1959).

Of the three, folders of engravings are shown in which, in the crudest way, they address the traumas of war and their opposition to the militarist resurgence and the revanchism of the right.

'Self-portrait' (1919), by Max Beckmann.

Christoph Irrlang

Buchloh cites as especially relevant a book by the historian Paul Westheim entitled

Das Holzschnitt Buch

(The Woodcut, 1921).

In it, engraving is considered as a language of the modern German nation, different from French Cubism and Italian Futurism.

“As a result of his exile to Mexico in 1941, Westheim links Mexican engraving with German expressionism, including Posada himself, as well as several members of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, in the second edition of his book (1954)”, he details. the commissioner.

'Deportation to Death' (1942), by Leopoldo Méndez.

The Art Institute of Chicago

The third section delves into the work of the Taller de Gráfica Popular that affects post-revolutionary Mexico and addresses its messages to the working and rural classes.

Away from the aesthetics of the muralists, whom these artists consider official, they distribute their pamphlets and posters with themes that have to do with agricultural reform or literacy.

The artists, men and women, carry out their campaigns using images that are understandable to everyone.

Near the end of the exhibition, the visitor discovers the face of the beautiful María Félix, the protagonist of

Río Escondido,

the film directed by Emilio

El Indio

Fernandez.

The film talks about Rosaura, a rural teacher sent by the president of Mexico to a distant town in Coahuila to teach her population to read and write.

Landowners and priests have fenced off the school and turned it into a stable.

Children will not be able to change their destiny.

Source: elparis

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