The Blanco Art Collection

Media: Lithographs
Themes: The founders and inspiring spirits of the TGP

David Alfaro Siqueiros

was born in Chihuahua, Mexico. His maternal grandfather was a politician and a poet who fought with the Juarez army against the Hapsburg’s Imperial Rule. Siqueiros initiated his art studies at the San Carlos Academy. In 1913 he abandoned his studies which were interrupted by the revolt of Victoriano Huerta against President Madero, and became a journalist working at the newspaper “La Vanguardia”. He joined the Constitutionalist Army, participating in many battles. Siqueiros became staff to General Diegues who was the Commander of West Forces of the Mexican Army.

After the revolution he was sent to Europe to continue his art studies by express instructions from the first Head Revolutionary , Venustiano Carranza.

Siqueiros visited Spain, France, Belgium and Italy. There he became a friend of Diego Rivera. While in Barcelona, Spain, he was published in the magazine Vida Americana in 1921. It was in a revolutionary art article where he presented his “Three orientation calls to the new generation of Artist Painters and Sculptors of America”. This theory became very important to the development of the monumental Mexican Art and was a a novel approach to the arts in the post-Dadaism, movement developed between Cubism (1914) and the advent of Surrealism in (1915).

Siqueiros returned to Mexico together with other Mexican artists studying in Europe, such as Orozco, Rivera, Leal, Revueltas. He founded a Union called “Syndicate of Revolutionary Painters Sculptors and Printers of Mexico”. Together with Rivera he founded a newspaper “El Machete”, which found great acceptance in Mexico resulting in massive publications. In 1932, he traveled to the USA and studied art at Chouinard School. From that moment Siqueiros initiated a career that ends only with his death.

In 1936 he found a Workshop he called “Siqueiros’ Experimental Environments for the Plastic Materials”. There, Jackson Pollock would research plastics and be given his initiation of the “Abstract Expressionism” or “Action Painting”.

Siqueiros did not joint the TGP, however, his more important lithograph productions were printed at TGP. It is unmistake, that the orgins of printing of modern Mexican art goes hand in hand, directly or indirectly with the Taller de Grafica Popular.

Media: Lithographs
Themes:
The founders and inspiring spirits of the TGP

Pablo O’Higgins (1904-1983)

was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Not well known in the United States, his native country, he has never had the well deserved recognition there. Some writers do not consider him well known even in Mexico, even though his Mexican citizenship was given to him by Presidential Decree.

Pablo was a great artist who never looked for the fame and glamour that many artists look for. He was an excellent artist, with a great sensibility for the problems people face in everyday life. His sensibility is beyond doubt. He painted life as it was. His lithograph representing the life of the sugarcane workers which he painted in Hawaii when this crop was produced there, is proof of this talent.

Pablo O’Higgins arrived in Mexico City in 1926. Why he chose Mexico is a good story. He was already a good piano player who had given recitals and concerts, from an early age, and who could have had a very successful career in the USA when read about Diego Rivera. The master muralist was working there as an artist. He wrote to Diego indicating to him his desire to work under him. Diego welcomed him, not realizing he was acquiring a talented and very sensitive artist.

O’Higgins actually told his father he didn’t want to study anymore. When his father asked him why, Pablo replied that like many other young Americans, he wanted to work to save money, in order to be able study with Diego Rivera. His father did not allow him to waste time working and gave him $100 dollars. That was all the cash he had in hand when he left for Mexico. That was all the financial support his father ever gave him.

In Mexico his career took off. He painted the people he respected… the ordinary, hard-working Mexican campesinos and workers, people he called the “Real Mexicans”.

Media: Lithographs
Themes: Mexicanidad

Celia Calderón

was born in Mexico City in 1921. She died there in 1969.

Between 1942-1944 she studied at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas. In 1944 she received a scholarship for graduate work in La Escuela de Artes del Libro at UNAM, Mexico City.

From 1946 she became a teacher in Art Education. In 1947 she was a founding member of the Mexican Society of Printers. In 1950 she had her first individual exhibit.

She was granted a fellowship from the British Council for one year’s studies at the Slade Art School in London. In 1952 she traveled to France and Italy.

She joined the Taller de Grafica Popular in 1952. In 1953 and 1959 she was Director of Exhibits at the TGP.

In 1957 traveled to USSR and China. In Peking she presented an individual exhibit.

In 1963 she was elected President of the TGP. She resigned from the TGP IN 1965. She was also a member of the Salon de la Plastica Mexicana.

Media: Lithographs
Themes: Mexicanidad

Elizabeth Catlett Mora

was born in 1919 in Washington, D.C. She currently lives in Cuernavaca, Morelos, Mexico.

In 1936, she graduated from Howard University in Washington with a BA in Art. In 1940 she obtained a Master’s Degree in Art from the University of Iowa. She also studied ceramic in the Art Institute of Chicago, lithography at the Art Students League in New York as well as sculpture under Ossip Zadkine and Grant Wood, also in New York.

She taught sculpture at Praire View College in Texas, at Williard University, in New Orleans, La. and at Hampton Institute in Virginia.

In 1939, in Iowa, she held her first individual Exhibit. She participated in the “American Negro Exbition” in Chicago.

Between 1945-1947 she was awarded a fellowishp from the Julius Rosewald Foundation. She taught with Charles White, in Louisiana, Virginia and Georgia.

In 1946 traveled to Mexico and joined the Taller de Grafica Popular and married Francisco Mora. She became Director of Fine Arts at the Escuela Nacional de Artes Plasticas.

In 1962 she traveled to Cuba.

She became the TGP’S General S ecretary in 1963. She resigned from the TGP in 1965.

She has received a great number of awards, honors, and homages in Mexico as well as in the United States.

Media: Lithographs
Themes: Mexicanidad

Elena Huerta

was born in Saltillo, Coahuila in 1908.

In 1921 she initiaded her studies in the Academy of Saltillo under Ruben Herrera. Between 1929 to 33 she studied at San Carlos Academy, under Carlos Merida. That same year she particpated in the chidren’s theater “Guiñol”.

From 1934 to 1937 was a member and founder of LEAR, and theater director for the League.

In 1939 she was a guest member to the TGP. She lived in the USSR from 1941 to 1946. In 1948 joined the TGP as a full member.

She was Director of the Guadalupe Posada, and Jose Clemente Orozco galleries. She painted her first mural in 1951 in Saltillo, Coahuila.

She traveled to China in 1957 and to Cuba in 1962.She partcipated in great number of exhibits in Mexico and around the world.