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.

The Surreal Netherworld of Victor Manuel Hernandez Castillo

Mexico's love affair with printmaking goes way back to the time of the Spanish Colonial invasion. Prints produced at that time were mostly brought to the New Spain, via the Church, describing pictures of saints, stories from the Bible. Some printed images came by way of maps, describing the newly appropriated Viceregal territories; or for the curious and scientific-minded, anthropological prints identifying the physical attributes of the New World's 'human species' had a huge European audience for those people looking to find a new life in the Meso-American'colonies'.

The printing process was introduced to the indigenous working class, and it, like architecture and decorative arts of the period, began to thrive. Prints to illustrate books and the movable printing letters produced an army of small papers and presses. Print shops that produced lithographs and relief prints grew as the country's war for independence came about. Those printmakers commented upon the state of affairs and societal customs and superstitions. Approaching the 20th century, printmaking in Mexico took a decided political turn, and printmakers like Jose Guadalupe Posada helped to fuel movements for the rights of the working classes and promote political agendas.

I have been fascinated with the brutal honesty one can find in Mexican or Latin American prints. Many artists have made images, knowing full well it would cause upheaval, and sometimes at great personal sacrifice. The flip side of Mexican printmaking is that which relates to literature and the surrealism one finds rampantly running the streets of this huge, wonderfully chaotic and exotic country. Complex images filled with what one can physically see, are sprinkled with one cannot possibly understand, yet magically it seems perfectly normal. Anyone who has read the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Luis Alberto Urrea understands this concept well.

One contemporary Mexican printmaker whose works describe the more surreal side of life is Victor Manuel Hernandez Castillo. Castillo's work is initially something out of a acid-trip dream. There are monsters and ghoulish faces, strange planes with human heads and arms attached to spoked-wheels. People, using the term liberally, fly through his compositions as though in a Chagall-inspired dream, but they seem more appropriately linked to the current culture's vampire-laced fantasies of creatures out for an evening's feast. In any event, Castillo fills his compositions with loads of fun and creep. Castillo gives us ghoulish kids riding their bicycles like banshees to a place no one wants to ponder, horrific gargoyle-like creatures out of the movie "Ghost-busters" travel moonlit landscapes in search of their prey,and depraved bird-bats fly overhead in search of new victims.

The netherworld Castillo presents to us is attractively repulsive. As much as we look, there is more to see buried within other images. His compositions are chock-full of creatures where we spend maybe more time than we want trying to figure out what they are. And for what it's worth, its all completely in bounds as far as Mexican surrealism goes. These netherworld creatures could stand for persons in our visible world, or stand as symbols for the corruption-laden operators who have plagued Mexico for years. I can't speak for Castillo's intentions. I can only describe what the images portend. Even a seemingly simple family portrait image with ancestors framed on a wall behind the primordial family unit has undertones of those whose family members weren't maybe so pleasant.

This work has teeth, and it bites into what rests slightly below the skin of this country, describes an undertone of fear and unrest among Mexico's sleeping giant population. If his images were truly to come to the surface, to the conscience of the people, some would go mad, some would cry out in pain, and some would go back to sleep because it would be preferable to think it was all a bad dream than see it as reality. Castillo places these images in our faces, and puts a slightly quirky and unreal twist on them to make us think they are surreal or humorous, when in fact they tell the truth. Looking at them we can see the clever disguises he puts in the images, but they get under our skin and fester like boils. Rising to the surface, these boils will burst and bring out the ugliness that one's conscious mind would choose to bury. These images cannot be ignored, nor can they be forgotten.

Education: Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas UNAM, Mexico City, Mexico

Carlos Cortez: Crusader for the Oppressed

One of Chicago’s most beloved printmakers, muralist and political activist Carlos Cortez (1923–2005) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of a Mexican Indian Wobbly union organizer father and a German socialist pacifist mother. Starting in 1947, for sixty years, , Cortez was involved with the Industrial Workers of the World,writing articles and drawing cartoons for the union’s newspaper. He identified himself as an anarcho-syndicalist, and was an accomplished artist and a highly influential political artist. After Cortez married in 1965, he and his wife moved to Chicago where he became an integral part of the local Mexican and Chicano mural movement until his death.

Cortez is perhaps best known for his wood and linoleum-cut prints. When linoleum became too expensive, he worked with woodblocks. “There’s a work of art waiting to be liberated inside every chunk of wood. I’m paying homage to the tree that was chopped down by making this piece of wood communicate something.” --- C.Cortez
Inspired by the works of José Guadalupe Posada and Käthe Kollwitz, Carlos combined technical and stylistic influences from German Expressionism and themes from ancient Aztec and modern Chicano sources to make numerous prints about striking workers, miners, farm workers and portraits about labor organizers. More often, his art was about advocating for a position, rather than opposing some situation.  His social sympathies are akin to the  works of French artists Pissaro, Signac, and Millet, but he was often heard to credit Posada as his greatest influence. He also had affinities with the work of Siquieros and Leopoldo Mendez.

For anyone that knew him, Carlos Cortez was a kind soul, a giving person, a generous mentor to upcoming artists, and still is a great inspiration to many artists to this day.  His beliefs came from love and compassion for telling the truth, and celebrating our commonalities. Cortez’ presence is clearly seen amongst the younger Mexican artists in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, and his legacy will continue to influence new generations of artists as long as there is a truth to be told or a cause to uphold. 

I once attended a panel discussion that included Cortez and some notable local artists and art historians. An exhibition of Cortez' prints surrounded the panel discussion. At one point in the discussion, an arrogant art historian (obviously trying to make an inflammatory statement to rile up the crowd) made a derogatory statement about Cortez' life's work for social reform. The audience gasped, and then people started to decry the historian for his lack of respect for Cortez and his work. The trick was in. The historian had deliberately played the 'insult card', but I sat back and watched Mr. Cortez during the audience's ensuing tirade. He was calm, collected, unfazed. He realized what the historian was up to, and wasn't about to lower himself or his work to respond. When it came time for him to speak he quietly, calmly, and with compassion, put the historian and his cheap grand-standing tactic in it's place. The audience cheered. Cortez knew his self-worth and his work would outlast some historian's cheap flashpoint of debate. You see, he knew - as most artists do - that his work will live on, and speak a truth that will be long felt after his passing. No one can take that away or demean its sincerity.

Chicago's National Museum of Mexican Art, which holds the largest, most complete collection of Carlos Cortez' work, has exhibited a complete installation of the artist’s living room studio. His work is otherwise found in several museum collections worldwide, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art. 

As an artist for the masses, this final statement about keeping his art available for the public is in keeping with his generous nature, and making sure the message of his work stays in the public’s eye.I hope this will inspire other artists to share their work more with their unknown audience, since our messages must remain in the public's eye to be powerful and meaningful. 

“… when you do a graphic, the amount of prints you can make from it is infinite. I made a provision in my estate, for whoever will take care of my blocks, that if any of my graphic works are selling for high prices, immediate copies should be made to keep the price down.”

–Carlos Cortez