The Strong Arm of Arturo Garcia Bustos

I do love the ability of a print to grab one's attention, open one's eyes to events in the world and bring about some acknowledgement and change. Such is the work of Arturo Garcia Bustos. His dramatic and no nonsense works sear right into our hearts and let us see, as only one from inside a situation can, the depths of humanity and the trials of a burdened nation trying to free itself from under the slumbering giant keeping them subjugated. Garcia Bustos' prints speak to us today as eloquently as from the time of the Mexican Muralist period when these images were made. He talks about the noble, poor working classes, and poverty and their struggle to be an independent people. He talks about the injustices found in the Mexican government who, at the time, sought to keep literal and artistic voices silent through intimidation and pain from death squads (not unlike today's corrupted situation). Some of his work references other themes like the "Sower" straight out of Millet and van Gogh; planting the seeds of revolution. Other times we see, like one of the prints shown below, the ghost of Goya's "3rd of May" painting, where the innocent are systematically slaughtered. There is little of Garcia Bustos' work that isn't well-considered and measured in his graphic voice. The work is bold and bows down to no one. He is considered one of Mexico's greatest living printmakers and muralists. His devotion to teaching is unparalleled in a land where mentorship is keenly felt and continues to feed Mexico's strong artistic legacy. He is an inspiration to generations of printmakers here and abroad.

Arturo García Bustos was born in Mexico City in 1926. As a child, Garcia Bustos was drawn to art with the wave of Mexican Muralism sweeping the nation. He studied architecture at the Escuela Nacional Preparatoria Núm 1 and then, at the age of fifteen, he went to study at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas in 1941, UNAM, INBA and later at the Escuela de Pintura y Escultura ("La Esmeralada")

One of his teachers was Frida Kahlo, with whom he went to study at her home in Coyoacan when she became too ill to go to the school. She affectionately called that group of students “Los Fridos”. He also worked as a mural painting apprentice with Diego Rivera. In the 1950s, Garcia Bustos took his first printmaking courses with Leopoldo Méndez at the Taller de Gráfica Popular, and then went to Korea and China to study Asian printmaking techniques.

Much of his career has been spent teaching and giving lectures, seminars and conferences. He taught engraving at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Guatemala City and founded the Taller de Grabado at the Casa del Lago in Chapultepec. He taught fine arts at the Escuela de Bellas Artes of the Benito Juárez Autonomous University of Oaxaca, Escuela de Iniciación Artística Núm. 3 in Mexico City and drawing and painting workshops at the Casa del Lago in Chapultepec. He has given conferences on the history of engraving and lithography in Mexico at the state universities of Oaxaca and Sinaloa, the Galería Municipal de Veracruz and in various venues in Mexico City. Abroad, he has given conferences on Mexican muralism and engraving in Germany, Italy and Guatemala.

García Bustos’ social life was spent in the company of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, sharing their ideas on art and politics. It was there he met and married his future wife, Guatemalan artist Rina Lazo. Garcia Bustos and his wife curently live in Mexico City and have opened part of their house, calling it the Galería de la Casa Colorado. The couple’s daughter, Rina García Lazo, an architect specializing in monument restoration, runs the gallery.

He has had numerous exhibitions in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Germany, Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, North Korea, the Soviet Union, , the United States, Venezuela, and he participated in numerous exhibitions with the Taller de Gráfica Popular.

Murals:
1947 assisted Frida Kahlo with a mural at the Josefa Ortiz de Domínguez House, Coyoacán
1948 Hotel Posada del Sol, Mexico City
1950 Escuela Rural de Temixco, Morelos
1952 Sociedad Cooperativa Ejidal, with Rina Lazo and Atilio Carrasco
1964 Pobledores de las Siete Regiones de Oaxaca, Museo Nacional de Antropología
1969 sixteen print murals, Venustiano Carranza House Museum in Cuatro Ciénegas, Coahuila
1971 Casa de Obrero Mundial, Mexico City
Oaxaca en la historía de México, state government building, Oaxaca
Centro de la Cultura, Azcapotzalco, Mexico City

Accolades:
1947 first prize, UNAM
1949 second prize, poster contest honoring Chopin
1953 gold medal, Peace Movement, Guatemala
1954 first prize Grupo Saker-Ti, Guatemala
1955 first prize and gold medal , V Festival de la Juventud, Poland
1957 first prize, Salón Annual de Grabado, Salón de la Plástica Mexicana
1957 silver medal, engraving event, Moscow
1962 first prize, Consejo Nacional de Turismo, Mexico City
1973 member of the Academia de Artes
1974 member of the World Peace Council
1974 Salón de la Plástica Mexicana
1974 Mexican Academy of Arts

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.