Leopoldo Méndez (June 30, 1902 – February 8, 1969) was one of Mexico's most important
graphic artists and one of that
country's most important artists from the 20th century. Méndez's work mostly focused on engraving for illustrations and other print work generally connected to his political and social activism. His most influential work was connected to organizations such as the
Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios
The Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR; League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) was a Mexican association of revolutionary artists and writers. It was established in the house of its first president Leopoldo Méndez in 1933 f ...
and the
Taller de Gráfica Popular creating propaganda related to the ideals of the
Mexican Revolution
The Mexican Revolution ( es, Revolución Mexicana) was an extended sequence of armed regional conflicts in Mexico from approximately 1910 to 1920. It has been called "the defining event of modern Mexican history". It resulted in the destruction ...
and against the rise of
Fascism
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and th ...
in the 1930s. Despite his importance in 20th-century artistic and political circles, Méndez was a relatively obscure figure during his life, and remains so afterwards. The reasons for this generally relate to the fact that he believed in working collaboratively and anonymously for the good of society rather than for monetary gain and because the socialist and communist themes of his work fell out of favor with later generations. Despite this, he has received some posthumous recognition with Mexican scholarship considering him to be the successor to graphics artist
José Guadalupe Posada
José Guadalupe Posada Aguilar (2 February 1852 – 20 January 1913) was a Mexican political lithographer who used relief printing to produce popular illustrations. His work has influenced numerous Latin American artists and cartoonists becau ...
.
Life
In general there is little written about the artist's personal life as he kept this separate from his career. In addition, there are few published photographs of the artist.
Méndez was born on June 30, 1902, in
Mexico City
Mexico City ( es, link=no, Ciudad de México, ; abbr.: CDMX; Nahuatl: ''Altepetl Mexico'') is the capital and largest city of Mexico, and the most populous city in North America. One of the world's alpha cities, it is located in the Valley of M ...
.
His background was poor as one of eight children born to a father who was a
shoemaker
Shoemaking is the process of making footwear.
Originally, shoes were made one at a time by hand, often by groups of shoemakers, or cobblers (also known as ''cordwainers''). In the 18th century, dozens or even hundreds of masters, journeymen an ...
and a mother who was a farm worker of
Nahua indigenous background from the State of Mexico.
His father's side of the family was politically active. His paternal grandfather died fighting the
French Intervention in Mexico.
His father worked against the
Porfirio Díaz
José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori ( or ; ; 15 September 1830 – 2 July 1915), known as Porfirio Díaz, was a Mexican general and politician who served seven terms as President of Mexico, a total of 31 years, from 28 November 1876 to 6 Decem ...
regime on the late 19th and early 20th century.
His father and uncles worked as vendors in a mining town called
El Oro until the political strongmen of the area forced them to leave, burning down their store.
However, both his parents had died before Méndez was two years old.
During his childhood he lived at his father's house, his grandmother's house and his Aunt Manuela's house, but was primarily raised by his aunt.
Méndez says that he was told that he was ill-tempered and picked fights, especially with his brothers.
As a child, he was the family
gofer
A gofer, go-fer or gopher is an employee who specializes in the delivery of special items to their superior(s). Examples of these special items include a cup of coffee, a tool, a tailored suit, or a car. Outside of the business world, the term ...
, as well a chaperone for his older sisters, which allowed him to see his neighbors struggling to make a living. Later he used these experiences in his art. He would also be strongly influenced by the Mexican Revolution, as the
Decena Trágica
The Ten Tragic Days ( es, La Decena Trágica) during the Mexican Revolution is the name now given to a multi-day coup d'etat in Mexico City by opponents of Francisco I. Madero, the democratically elected president of Mexico, between 9 - 19 Feb ...
happening when he was only ten years old.
His interest in drawing began in primary school. He competed with another boy in his class as to who could draw better, with the topic being battleships. He also drew portraits of
Venustiano Carranza
José Venustiano Carranza de la Garza (; 29 December 1859 – 21 May 1920) was a Mexican wealthy land owner and politician who was Governor of Coahuila when the constitutionally elected president Francisco I. Madero was overthrown in a Februar ...
both at school and at home, which was the topic of his first piece of artwork to be sold.
Directly out of primary school, he entered the
Academy of San Carlos
The Academy of San Carlos ( es, Academia de San Carlos) is located at 22 Academia Street in just northeast of the main plaza of Mexico City. It was the first major art academy and the first art museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1781 as th ...
in Mexico City. His teachers included Saturninio Herrán, Germán Gedovius, Ignacio Rosas, Francisco de la Torre and Leandro Izaguirre. After three years at the academy, he left to attend the new Escuela de Pintura al Aire Libre opened by Alfredo Ramos Martinez in the Chimalistac area in the south of Mexico City. One complaint he had about both schools was that he was never permitted to paint movement, only stationary objects and landscapes without people or animals. He learned to draw movement illustrating periodicals, which he did to earn money to live on.
He developed strong political leanings which influenced not only his art but other aspects of his life. They led to friendships with artists and writers such as with
Manuel Maples Arce,
Germán Cueto
Germán Cueto (February 8 or 9, 1883, Mexico City – February 14, 1975) was a Mexican artist. He was part of the initial wave of artistic activity following the Mexican Revolution. However, his stay in Europe from 1927 to 1932 moved him into m ...
,
Arqueles Vela
Arqueles Vela (Guatemala/ Tapachula 1899 – Mexico City 1977) was a Mexican writer, journalist
A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and ...
,
Fermín Revueltas Sánchez,
Ramón Alva del Canal,
Germán List Arzubide and others, forming a group called
Los Estridentistas. It also gave him the opportunity to live in work in
Xalapa
Xalapa or Jalapa (, ), officially Xalapa-Enríquez (), is the capital city of the Mexican state of Veracruz and the name of the surrounding municipality. In the 2005 census the city reported a population of 387,879 and the municipality of which ...
,
Veracruz
Veracruz (), formally Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave (), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Veracruz de Ignacio de la Llave), is one of the 31 states which, along with Me ...
from 1925 to 1927, which was a center of this movement. He stated in an interview with
Elena Poniatowska
Hélène Elizabeth Louise Amélie Paula Dolores Poniatowska Amor (born May 19, 1932), known professionally as Elena Poniatowska () is a French-born Mexican journalist and author, specializing in works on social and political issues focused on th ...
what it was very
Bohemian at the time and during this time his politics became more radical, focusing on the ideal of the Mexican Revolution, especially
Emiliano Zapata
Emiliano Zapata Salazar (; August 8, 1879 – April 10, 1919) was a Mexican revolutionary. He was a leading figure in the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920, the main leader of the people's revolution in the Mexican state of Morelos, and the ins ...
. This coincided with the state government under General Jara, but when he fell out of power, Méndez moved back to Mexico City and joined the
Mexican Communist Party
The Mexican Communist Party ( es, Partido Comunista Mexicano, PCM) was a communist party in Mexico. It was founded in 1917 as the Socialist Workers' Party (, PSO) by Manabendra Nath Roy, a left-wing Indian revolutionary. The PSO changed its na ...
.
His time here and other parts of rural Mexico gave him an appreciation of the
country's handcraft and folk art tradition, making him a collector during his life.
Much of his life and work was dedicated to promoting leftist political causes, remaining faithful to the political beliefs of his youth in post-Revolution Mexico to a large degree.
In 1930, he founded the Lucha Intellectual Proletaria and traveled to the United States to give presentations.
In 1939, he received a
Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...
and moved to New York where he continued to associate with workers’ groups.
One of these beliefs was that artists should work for the people and therefore, his financial situation was always modest. His role in the political activities of many artists and writers of his time was large but he tended to claim little individual credit and to stay in the background.
In 1940s, he was under arrest for a few days after
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
and his group assaulted
Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
’s house in
Coyoacán
Coyoacán ( , ) is a borough (''demarcación territorial'') in Mexico City. The former village is now the borough's "historic center". The name comes from Nahuatl and most likely means "place of coyotes", when the Aztecs named a pre-Hispanic vi ...
, kidnapping and killing his secretary. The reason for this was that the attackers left “evidence” to frame the
Taller de Gráfica Popular. However, Méndez was released with no charges.
In 1946, he left the Mexican Communist Party, founding the
Partido Popular in 1947.
He and was a candidate for district representative in Mexico City with this party in the 1953. In 1958, he left the Partido Popular and supported
Adolfo López Mateos
Adolfo López Mateos (; 26 May 1909 – 22 September 1969) was a Mexican politician who served as President of Mexico from 1958 to 1964.
Beginning his political career as a campaign aide of José Vasconcelos during his run for president, Lóp ...
for president.
His political efforts went international starting in the 1940s traveling to the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
in 1953.
After
World War II, he focused on issues related to world peace. These efforts gained him the
International Peace Prize from the
World Council of Peace in
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
in 1952.
Méndez continued to work in both art and politics until February 1969 when he fell ill and died while working on a book dedicated to Mexican handcrafts and folk art. He left behind one son, Pablo Méndez.
Career and graphic design
Méndez's career mixed political activism, painting, art education and book design but is best known for his engraving work, creating over 700 during his lifetime.
This engraving work started early for book and magazine illustration. In the 1920s, he began with two publications called Irradiador and Horizonte as part of his involvement with a political and artistic movement called
Stridentism Stridentism (Spanish: Estridentismo) was an artistic and multidisciplinary avant-garde movement, founded in Puebla City by Manuel Maples Arce at the end of 1921 but formally developed in Xalapa where all the founders moved after the University of V ...
.
In 1929, he began teaching under the Cultural Missions programs of the
Mexican Secretariat of Public Education in
Jalisco
Jalisco (, , ; Nahuatl: Xalixco), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Jalisco ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Jalisco ; Nahuatl: Tlahtohcayotl Xalixco), is one of the 31 states which, along with Mexico City, comprise the 32 Federal En ...
and the
State of Mexico
The State of Mexico ( es, Estado de México; ), officially just Mexico ( es, México), is one of the 32 federal entities of the United Mexican States. Commonly known as Edomex (from ) to distinguish it from the name of the whole country, it is ...
which included contributing to the El Sembrador and El Maestro Rural magazines. Both were aimed at farm communities and served as a sources of materials for teachers, so the use of graphics along with text was considered fundamental because of high illiteracy.
In 1942, he published ''En el nombre de Cristo'' a series of seven lithographs about barbarism attributed to the
Cristeros and the assassination of teachers.
Méndez's change in political activity often led to a change in the publication he contributed to. For example, in 1946 he left the Mexican Communist Party and joined the Grupo Insurgente José Carlos Mariátegui, initiating collaboration with its official publication called El Insurgente.
His first major body of work was created as a founding member of the
Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios
The Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR; League of Revolutionary Writers and Artists) was a Mexican association of revolutionary artists and writers. It was established in the house of its first president Leopoldo Méndez in 1933 f ...
(LEAR) begun in 1933. The group produced works and exhibited together as well as published its own magazine called Frente a Frente. During this period, Méndez's work became militant; believing that only art created to promote the interests of the working class had value. This coincided with much of Mexico's politics at the time under
Lázaro Cárdenas
Lázaro Cárdenas del Río (; 21 May 1895 – 19 October 1970) was a Mexican army officer and politician who served as president of Mexico from 1934 to 1940.
Born in Jiquilpan, Michoacán, to a working-class family, Cárdenas joined the Mex ...
.
Méndez was able to change style of his prints to account for the materials being used and for his intended audience. However, his work is characterized by a distillation of the images into their essential components for impact. These images included pre-Hispanic,
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) , from , with the same meanings. is a period in European history marking the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and covering the 15th and 16th centuries, characterized by an effort to revive and surpass ideas ...
and
Baroque art
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
of both Europe and Mexico as well as nineteenth century Mexican art and
Mexican muralism. He generally focused on secular, rather than religious images as well as popular themes taking after the work of José Guadalupe Posada. While his work is mostly realistic, it has incorporated imaginative elements from
Cubism
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassemble ...
,
Italian Futurism
Futurism ( it, Futurismo, link=no) was an artistic and social movement that originated in Italy, and to a lesser extent in other countries, in the early 20th century. It emphasized dynamism, speed, technology, youth, violence, and objects such ...
,
Russian Constructivism
Constructivism is an early twentieth-century art movement founded in 1915 by Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. Abstract and austere, constructivist art aimed to reflect modern industrial society and urban space. The movement rejected deco ...
,
German Expressionism
German Expressionism () consisted of several related creative movements in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin during the 1920s. These developments were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central ...
and
Surrealism
Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to l ...
. One influence generally missing from his work is Russian-style
Social realism
Social realism is the term used for work produced by painters, printmakers, photographers, writers and filmmakers that aims to draw attention to the real socio-political conditions of the working class as a means to critique the power structure ...
despite his socialist and communist politics.
Taller de Gráfica Popular
However, by 1937, Méndez had left LEAR, disappointed with the group's lack of activity. He founded a new group that year called the
Taller de Gráfica Popular along with
Pablo O'Higgins
Pablo Esteban O'Higgins (born Paul Higgins Stevenson; March 1, 1904 - July 16, 1983) was an American-Mexican artist, muralist and illustrator.
Early life and education
Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, O'Higgins was raised there and in San Diego, C ...
,
Alfredo Zalce,
Luis Arenal
Luis Arenal Bastar (born Teapa, 1908 or 1909 – died Mexico City, May 7, 1985) was a Mexican painter, engraver and sculptor. He was a founding member of the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios, the Taller de Gráfica Popular and th ...
,
Ignacio Aguirre,
Isidora Ocampo and others.
Like LEAR, its function was political solidly to the left but anti-Trotsky and allied with
Silvestre Revueltas
Silvestre Revueltas Sánchez (December 31, 1899 – October 5, 1940) was a Mexican composer of classical music, a violinist and a conducting, conductor.
Life
Revueltas was born in Santiago Papasquiaro in Durango, and studied at the National Co ...
,
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
,
Lombardo Toledano and others.
It was a collective work center producing paintings and engravings, creating realistic but simple designs with its more abundant engraving work. They considered artistic development inseparable from political development, mostly working with cultural and political institutions of similar views.
It was most active during World War II, producing propaganda against
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Germany from 1933 until his death in 1945. He rose to power as the leader of the Nazi Party, becoming the chancellor in 1933 and then ...
and his allies along with that against capitalism and the U.S. Méndez was central to the Taller, taking part in all its activities, supervising its production and doing most of the relations work with other organizations, such as unions and art galleries.
Despite his importance, by 1959, political differences with the more ardent Communists of the Taller marginalized him and he formally resigned in 1961.
Exhibitions
Méndez had limited exhibitions during his career. His first major exhibition was in 1930, when he traveled to Los Angeles as a collaborative effort with
Carlos Mérida.
In 1945, he had an individual exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, followed by one in 1946 at the
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura
The Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL, en, National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature), located in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, is the Mexican institution in charge of coordinating artistic and cultural ...
.
Publications
Méndez's greatest volume of work was produced in the latter 1940s, when he worked compulsively and sold it for very low prices. At this time many American museums and private individuals from the U.S., Mexico and Europe purchased his prints.
This has resulted in his work scattered among various collections including those of
Carlos Monsiváis
Carlos Monsiváis Aceves (May 4, 1938 – June 19, 2010) was a Mexican philosopher, writer, critic, political activist, and journalist. He also wrote political opinion columns in leading newspapers within the country's progressive sectors. H ...
and the
Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, and of various institutions in Chicago, New York,
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a tempera ...
,
Moscow
Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...
and
Warsaw
Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officiall ...
, mostly in graphic arts museums.
Murals
Méndez worked on two notable murals during his career. In 1946, he created one mural with Pablo O'Higgins called ''La materidad y la asistencia social'' located at the Clínica No. 1 of the
Mexican Social Security Institute
The Mexican Institute of Social Security ( es, Instituto Mexicano del Seguro Social, IMSS) is a governmental organization that assists public health, pensions and social security in Mexico operating under the Secretariat of Health. It also for ...
.
He created an engraving mural of
José Guadalupe Posada
José Guadalupe Posada Aguilar (2 February 1852 – 20 January 1913) was a Mexican political lithographer who used relief printing to produce popular illustrations. His work has influenced numerous Latin American artists and cartoonists becau ...
in 1956.
Political art
His political graphics work waned after 1950 as political art was becoming devalued and his work less collected.
However, he had begun to create engravings for the
Mexican cinema
Mexican cinema dates to the late nineteenth century during the rule of President Porfirio Díaz. Seeing a demonstration of short films in 1896, Díaz immediately saw the importance of documenting his presidency in order to present an ideal ...
, with a series for the film ''Río Escondido'' by
Emilio Fernández
Emilio "El Indio" Fernández Romo (; 26 March 1904 – 6 October 1986) was a Mexican film director, actor and screenwriter. He was one of the most prolific film directors of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. He is best k ...
, then others such as ''Pueblerina'' (1948), ''Un día en la vida'' (1949), ''El rebozo de Soledad'' (1949), M''emorias de un mexicano'' (1950), ''La rebelión de los colgados'' (1953) and ''La rosa blanca'' (1959).
For the film ''
Macario'' by
Roberto Gavaldón
Roberto Gavaldón (June 7, 1909 in Jiménez, Chihuahua – September 4, 1986 in Mexico City) was a Mexican film director.
Eight of Gavaldón's films were featured on the list 100 Best Movies of the Cinema of Mexico. His 1958 film ''Ash We ...
, he designed the images of God, death and the Devil.
Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana
In 1958/1959 Méndez left the Taller de la Gráfica Popular due to ideological differences and founded a new publishing concern called the Fondo Editorial de la Plástica Mexicana along with
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
Manuel Álvarez Bravo (February 4, 1902 – October 19, 2002) was a Mexican artistic photographer and one of the most important figures in 20th century Latin American photography. He was born and raised in Mexico City. While he took art classes a ...
,
Carlos Pellicer,
Rafael Carrillo Azpeitia and
Ricardo J. Zevada.
The first book published by the organization was ''La pintura mural de la Revolución Mexicana'', followed by ''Los maestros europeo de la Galería de San Carlos de México'' and ''José Guadalupe Posada, ilustrador de la vida mexicana''.
It became a major art book publishing company producing several high-quality books about
Mexican art
Various types of visual arts developed in the geographical area now known as Mexico. The development of these arts roughly follows the history of Mexico, divided into the prehispanic Mesoamerican era, the colonial period, with the period after M ...
while he directed it. When he died, he was working on a book about
Mexican handcrafts and folk art
Mexican handcrafts and folk art is a complex collection of items made with various materials and intended for utilitarian, decorative or other purposes. Some of the items produced by hand in this country include ceramics, wall hangings, vases, fu ...
.
The last major organization that Méndez founded during his lifetime as the
Academia de Artes de México in 1968.
Legacy
Méndez was part of a generation of artists that emerged in the 1920s and played an important role in the culture and politics of Mexico after the Mexican Revolution. However, he has been a relatively obscure figure since during his career for two reasons. One was that he remained faithful to the idea that artists should work collaboratively and
anonymously so he did not seek fame like others from his generation did. A second reason is that his socialist ideas, his association with the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
and
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet Union, Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as Ge ...
make him seem less relevant to the generations that followed him.
During his lifetime, his only formal recognitions included one of his books, ''Incidentes melódicos del mundo irracional'', receiving a local prize in 1944, the first Premio Nacional de Grabado in Mexico City in 1946 and the International Prize of Peace as a member of the Taller de la Gráfica Popular in 1952.
In 1962, the
Museo Nacional de Arte Moderno exhibited a retrospective of his work. He was also honored at the
Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes the same year.
Since his death, he has received some recognition. Mexican academic research generally ranks him as high as other artists of the 20th century such as
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, known as Diego Rivera (; December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the ...
and
José Clemente Orozco
José Clemente Orozco (November 23, 1883 – September 7, 1949) was a Mexican caricaturist and painter, who specialized in political murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Sique ...
, but little documentation of his life exists. In 1971,
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (born José de Jesús Alfaro Siqueiros; December 29, 1896 – January 6, 1974) was a Mexican social realist painter, best known for his large public murals using the latest in equipment, materials and technique. Along with ...
included a portrait of Méndez along with another engraving great José Guadalupe Posada at his
Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros
The Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros is a cultural, political and social facility located in Mexico City as part of the World Trade Center Mexico City. It was designed and decorated by David Alfaro Siqueiros in the 1960s and hosts the largest mural w ...
in Mexico City.
Another early homage was an exhibition of his work at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in the 1970s.
In 2002, on the 100th anniversary of his birth, writer Carlos Monsivais sponsored a conference on Méndez's work at the Museo Nacional de Arte (MUNAL). The same museum held a retrospective of his work in 2003.
The Taller de la Gráfic Popular also organized an exhibition in honor of the 100th anniversary of his birth.
In 2012, the Museo de Artes Gráficas in
Saltillo
Saltillo () is the capital and largest city of the northeastern Mexican state of Coahuila and is also the municipal seat of the municipality of the same name. Mexico City, Monterrey, and Saltillo are all connected by a major railroad and highwa ...
held a retrospective of his work.
However, there remains no museum dedicated to his work and the only formal catalog was created by the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in 1977.
Despite his obscurity, he is generally regarded as one of Mexico's most important graphic artists and one of the most important artists of the first half of the 20th century. Mexican academia also considers him to be the heir of José Guadalupe Posada, who he admired greatly.
External links
* Listings for over 340 works produced by Leopoldo Méndez during his time at the Taller de Gráfica Popular can be viewed a
Gráfica Mexciana
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mendez, Leopoldo
1902 births
1969 deaths
Mexican artists