13 Pieces That Evoke the Artistry of Mexican Printmaking

Drawing on a rich museum collection and even richer history, “Mexican Prints at the Vanguard” on view at The Met deftly explores the medium of printmaking in Mexico. From screen prints and woodcuts to lithographs, the country’s tradition of printmaking—the exhibition focuses on works of the eighteenth to mid-twentieth century, many of which donated by French-born Mexican artist Jean Charlot—has played a significant role in addressing political and social concerns.

José Guadalupe Posada’s relief prints depicted skeletons, calaveras and skulls, often imbued with political messages like the 1913 La Calavera Catrina. The prints would go on to massively influence the Mexican art landscape at home and abroad. Communist muralist Diego Rivera would reappropriate the image, a skeletal woman with a massive, feathered hat that originally satirized upper-class women for their adopted European dress. Rehabilitating her through illustrious symbols of Indigenous culture he included La Catrina in the 1947 mural Sueño de una tarde dominical en la Alameda Central (Dream of a Sunday Afternoon at Alameda Central Park).

“Every artist who has been worth anything in art has been such a propagandist,” Rivera said. “I want to be a propagandist and I want to be nothing else. I want to use my art as a weapon.” Fellow fresco muralist José Clemente Orozco—alongside whom Rivera ushered in the Mexican Muralist movement—depicted the lives of workers and human suffering, but out of a less realistic lens and with further interest in machinery, tying in the physical machinations of capitalism in the soaring scenes. He painted murals from Guadalajara to Hanover and New York City.

Whether the texture of fresco or the lasting imprint of the calaveras, the artists of this era solidified the importance of Mexican art on a global scale, which continues to evolve today. Here, a foray into worlds upon worlds of pattern and motif.

“Mexican Prints at the Vanguard” is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from September 12 through January 5, 2025.

Items selected by Nicole Chapoteau, Samantha Gasmer, Kia D. Goosby, Jessica Neises, Miles Pope, and Daisy Shaw-Ellis.