Jean Charlot -Mexico's Brethren Printmaker

The prints of Jean Charlot reveal a man in love with foreign culture, and the exotic indigenous peoples who inhabit them. Charlot originally hailed from Europe, but he came to live in the Americas and embraced the culture, the food, women, the innocence of youth and the nurturing of family life.

He loved to portray daily rituals and embraced small moments in one’s life. The gentle simplicity of his compositions and blended colors vibrate life under the surface of one’s skin. The gentle kiss of a mother to her infant, and the intimacy of watching a mother combing a young girl’s hair are examples of an artist who is presently witnessing the event. He is not a voyeur sneaking a peak, at an intimate moment. He is part of the activity, and so are we.

Charlot’s compositions are closely cropped to his subjects. There isn’t a lot of excessive space around his figures, and their short, squat stances pull us closer to them, as though they are children to be cared for, looked after, and protected. Charlot’s Hawaiian-inspired images show mythic figure which look like statues, or personified spirits in the natural settings. His colors are flatter and more colorful that the previous Mexican-inspired work. The later pieces express more peacefulness and a oneness with the environment.

In all, Charlot brings small moments of observation to a grander level of tranquility and internal peace. I hope you enjoy seeing these prints, and reading more about his life, which was fairly instrumental in re-introducing Jose Guadalupe Posada’s work to the Mexican people; and bringing Posada’s skeleton figures to such joyful prominence every year when we celebrate the Day of the Dead.

Bio
Jean Charlot (1898 –1979) was a French/ American artist, who worked in Mexico and the United States. Charlot was born in Paris, but he claimed to have Aztec roots. This was because his mother was from Mexico, his grandfather was a French-Indian mestizo, and his Spanish great grandfather had married a woman who was half Aztec.

Charlot was fascinated with pre-Columbian artifacts and Mexican manuscripts. He studied art in Paris before serving in the French Army during WWI. In 1921, Charlot and his mother went to Mexico City, where he met Fernando Leal, Diego Rivera, Dorothy “Zohmah” Day and Pablo O'Higgins. He later married Day, who had originally moved to Mexico to be involved with the Mexican art movement.

Charlot is credited for having brought the work of Mexican printmaker, José Guadalupe Posada, to international acclaim. Posada was prolific, having produced more than 15 thousand political satirical prints and lithographs, which were known from Mexico’s pre-revolutionary newspapers. Because Charlot was impressed with Posada’s cartoon-esque style, he sought out Posada's former publisher and in 1928 and1930, he published catalogs of Posada’s prints. Posada's images ultimately influenced several great Mexican artists like Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Pablo O'Higgins, and still is a major influence on today’s younger Mexican artists.

After the Mexican Revolution, mural painting became one of the more accessible visual means to convey the government’s messages about social justice. Charlot participated in this mural art movement with his fresco called "Massacre in the Templo Mayor".

From 1926 to 1928, he spent time at Chichen Itza, helping to excavate, trace and copy bas-reliefs and painted surfaces from their newly revealed ancient Mayan temples. This had a major influence upon his own art.

While Charlot lived in the US, he also did some commissions for the Work Projects Administration's Federal Arts Project. In 1947, he moved to Colorado and spent two years teaching fresco painting and making lithographs at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. He then moved to Hawaii to teach art at the University of Hawaii. His latter works reflect images from his thirty years’ living on the island, and they exude his fascination with nature and the Hawaiian people.

Public Collections:
The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
Cleveland Museum of Art
Hawaii State Art Museum
Honolulu Museum of Art
University of Hawaii at Manoa

1940 - illustrated Tito's Hats, which was written by Mel Ferrer.
1972 - published "An Artist on Art: Collected Essays of Jean Charlot", on Mexican art history.

Better than Daumier: Mexico's Jose Guadalupe Posada

José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913) was born in Aguascalientes, on February 2, 1852, and he died on January 20, 1913. Uncontested as his country's most influential printmaker, with a staggering body of work numbering between sixteen hundred to twenty thousand prints, his imagery included natural disasters, satirical commentary, politics, heroes and revolution, the common people, songs, assassins, tragedy and death, and miracles. Posada lived during one of the most turbulent times in Mexico.    He captured the essence of this period in his prints to the extent that they became icons to the Mexican people and thus to the Mexican Revolution.

Posada was one of nine male children born into a poor family. He was educated by his older brother Cirilo, who taught him how to read and draw. At the age of eighteen, Posada attended art school. He studied lithography and engraving in Trinidad Pedroso’s taller as a teenager and he also started to do political cartoons for a local newspaper, El Jicote. Unfortunately, soon after Posada worked for the paper, one of his cartoons offended a powerful politician, Jesus Gomez Portugal, and the paper closed. Posada then moved to Leon, Guanajuato, married and set up a commercial illustration business.The printing business was very successful in advertising, illustrating books and printed posters of all subjects, including religious icons like the Virgen de Guadalupe. It was a popular and thriving business until it was wiped out by a flood in 1888. 

Prior to that, Posada taught printing at a local preparatory school, and he moved to Mexico City where he went to work for  La Patria Illustrada, whose family was related to the famed Octavio Paz. Posada eventually left La Patria to work for a publishing firm run by Antonio Vanegas Arroyo. Arroyo had established a press specializing in inexpensive literature for the masses: historical, comedies, thrillers, songs, and histories of saints. These were sold in the city's plazas and markets. Arroyo and his son also founded several newspapers, including El Centavo Perdido, La Gaceta Callejera and El Boletín. During that period, Posada created a huge number of book covers and Illustrations.

Posada was a popular cartoonist, artist and a leader of Mexican Expressionism. His work influenced many Latin American artists because of his satirical content. He is often spoken of, always in high esteem, as the ‘Mexican Daumier’, for his scathing commentary, but his work is stronger in the sense that he combined the Mexican cultural fascination with the dead (via skeletons) and produced acerbic, humorous illustrations that now are best known as folk art. On the whole that propels him from the one trick pony of an obvious visual cartoon to something more sublimely dual-edged.


In his Calaveras series, Posada depicts skeletons happily engaging in events and activities of the living. During the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution of 1910, his skeletons, his “catrinas”, were used as a metaphor for the corrupt society he lived in, so he attacked  politicians and anyone else he felt appropriate. On many occasions, however, Posada was thrown into jail for his 'artistic offenses' to Mexican society.   Posada saw the catrinas as representing the repressions of Mexican society and they reflected his own preoccupation with death. Now, his skeletal images have become synonymous with the Mexican holiday Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).

 Unfortunately and surprisingly, Posada and his work were nearly forgotten by the time of his death. The tragedy of Posada’s death was that he was so poor he was buried in what is considered to be the lowest level of burial - a sixth class grave - in the Dolores Cemetery. When no one claimed his remains after seven years, as per the cemetery's policy, his remains were thrown out.

Recognition came to Posada after his death largely due to some other Mexican artists. If it weren’t for Diego Rivera who collected his prints, and Jean Charlot, who helped to re-circulate his work in the 1920s, Posada might have fallen into obscurity. The famed Jose Clemente Orozco was often heard to have credited Posada as a major influence upon his own artwork. Posada’s work can now be seen at the Bellas Artes National Institute, the Biblioteca de Mexico , the National Library of Anthropology and History, the Municipal Archive of the city of León, and they will forever be seen in during festivities celebrating the Day of the Dead.

La Calaca International Print Exchange opens In Lauderhill, Florida

Very pleased to be included in this travelling exhibit of 150 printmakers from over 20 countries.