Francisco Toledo (painter)

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Francisco Toledo (2005)

Francisco Benjamin Lopez Toledo (born July 17, 1940 in Juchitán de Zaragoza , Oaxaca , † September 5, 2019 in Oaxaca de Juárez ) was a Mexican painter. In 2005 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Award . The reasons given by the jury highlighted the “commitment of Toledo and its art to the protection, development and renewal of the architectural and cultural heritage, the environment and community life in its homeland, Oaxaca”.

Life

Francisco Toledo (2005)
Francisco Toledo (2005)

Francisco Toledo was of Zapotec descent - an indigenous minority who made up around ten percent of the population in this southern state of Mexico. A few years after his birth, his family moved first to Ixtepec and then to Minatitlán, in the state of Veracruz . There he attended elementary school until 1952. After moving again, this time to Oaxaca de Juárez , he switched to high school and began his artistic training in Arturo García Bustos' studio at the age of fifteen . After two years he continued his studies in Mexico City , at the Arts and Crafts School of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes y Literatura (INBAL). In 1959 he had his first solo exhibitions at the Antonio Souza Gallery in Mexico City and at the Fort Worth Center in Texas . In the same year, at the age of nineteen, he left Mexico and traveled first to Rome and a few months later to Paris .

There he worked, among other things, in the studio of the printmaker Stanley Hayter . His first stay in Europe was very successful. Not least because of his friendship with Octavio Paz and the support of Olga and Rufino Tamayo , he quickly became a shooting star in the gallery scene, initially in Paris - soon afterwards in London , Amsterdam and New York .

After five years in Europe, Toledo returned to Mexico in 1965 and first moved to Ixtepec. Several, sometimes longer, stays abroad followed. Between 1967 and 1969 he worked again in Paris, and in 1971 he spent several months there again. Between 1977 and 1982 he lived temporarily in New York, then again in Paris and Barcelona . In 1990 he stayed again in New York and in 2002 he lived in Santa Monica , California for a year .

In between, he kept returning to the state of Oaxaca. At first he lived in Juchitán , where Natalia, the first of his five children, was born in 1967. There he bought a piece of land, built a house and hardly painted in this phase of his life. However, his political commitment to the region began in Juchitán. He founded the Casa de la Cultura Juchitán in the early 1970s . In 1970 and 1972 his two children Laureana and Jeronimo were born. He started painting again in the mid-1970s. In 1976 he moved permanently to the capital of the state - Oaxaca de Juárez. He moved into an old colonial house in Calle Macedonio Alcala 507 - today the seat of the Instituto de Artes Graficas of Oaxaca (IAGO) founded by Toledo . At the beginning of the 1990s he was the initiator and financier of a movement that helped this city and region to a new and impressive cultural bloom. In 2000 he joined the Academia de Artes .

Francisco Toledo died in September 2019 at the age of 79 in his home in Oaxaca de Juárez of complications from lung cancer .

Sociopolitical engagement

Students at Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo , Oaxaca
Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo

Since 1993, Francisco Toledo has been the driving force behind the Pro-OAX initiative , the aim of which is to preserve Oaxaca's cultural and national heritage over the long term. In this union, Toledo's aesthetic ideas are combined with the population's awareness of their own cultural identity. The Pro-OAX initiative succeeds in preventing the construction of a luxury hotel in the historic Santo Domingo de Guzmán monastery. Instead, the Museo de las Culturas de Oaxaca becomes an attraction for visitors from all over the world. The construction of a cable car to the pre-Columbian sites on Monte Albán and the opening of a McDonald’s branch in the historic city center of Oaxaca de Juárez are also prevented . The Reuters news agency wrote: "Local culture won a battle against global consumerism." However, this has not hindered the social and cultural progress of the Oaxaca region. On the contrary: the capital of the state - Oaxaca de Juárez - is now one of the most important political, cultural and artistic centers in Mexico.

The projects that Francisco Toledo initiated and supported are:

  • The Instituto de Artes Gráficos de Oaxaca (IAGO) , founded in 1988 , with a collection of more than 9,000 graphics (including by artists such as Pablo Picasso and Otto Dix ) and a library with more than 20,000 volumes.
  • The Centro Fotográfico Álvarez Bravo  - founded in 1996 - with four halls showing changing exhibitions, with work and training facilities, the Jorge Luis Borges library and a media library.
  • The Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca (MACO) , of which he was president, and which presents the works of him and other important painters of the region such as Rufino Tamayo , Rodolfo Morales , Rodolfo Nieto and Francisco Gutiérrez .
  • The cinema Cinema el Pochote , founded in 1998 , is an art house cinema that - with free admission - presents international film classics and organizes changing exhibitions of sculptures in the garden .
  • The Taller Arte Papel Oaxaca , a decommissioned hydroelectric power station , which has been producing natural paper from plants from the region since 1999 .
  • The Centro Cultural Santo Domingo , a project with a library, botanical garden and a workshop for restoration .

As early as 1983 he founded the Ediciones Toledo , a publishing house that mainly publishes the works of John Ashbery and Seamus Heaney .

plant

Self portrait

Toledo worked with very different artistic techniques. He painted on canvas and paper with acrylic , gouache , watercolor . He was a lithographer and engraver , worked with ceramics , made sculptures and had carpets made by weavers in Teotitlan del Valle according to his own designs . When he returned from Europe in 1965, he began to take a keen interest in the Zapotec culture and mythology of this pre-Columbian people. It is also the cultural mix in his home province of Oaxaca , with persistent indigenous influences in a colonized and evangelized Catholic society, that has kept him busy. He undertook artistic journeys of discovery into both worlds, into the remnants of the Indian world of the Zapotecs and other Indian cultures, and into the globalized world of the 20th century. He associated the forms of nature with metaphors from literature and art. The influences of William Blake , Francisco de Goya , James Ensor , Albrecht Dürer , Joan Miró , surrealists such as Paul Klee or Jean Dubuffet and writers such as Franz Kafka and Jorge Luis Borges are visible .

Art scholars claim that Toledo's work was shaped by the view that the world of humans and the world of animals would merge into one universal nature. This shows the shamanic, pre-Columbian belief that every human fate is intertwined with an Aztec spirit in animal form. Toledo himself protested against the attempt to reduce his work to folklore and its ethnic origins. What is undisputed, however, is that Toledo's fine sense of the fantastic behind the obvious shows itself in characters that are partly human, partly belonging to the animal kingdom. Sometimes it seems monstrous, but sometimes it is humorous and playful.

Important exhibitions

La Mesa
  • 1959: Galería Antonio Souza Mexico City, Mexico
  • 1964: Hamilton Galleries London, England
  • 1974: Martha Jackson Gallery New York, USA
  • 1984: Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes Mexico City, Mexico
  • 1990: Toledo , exhibition accompanied by the film To Francisco Toledo made by Ornette Coleman and Philippe Briet , Philippe Briet Gallery, New York, USA
  • 1991: Latin American Masters , Los Angeles, USA
  • 1992: Home Made in Oaxaca , MARCO Monterrey, Mexico
  • 1992: Latin-American Art , Georges Pompidou Center Paris , France
  • 1992: Small Scale Sculpture , Felbach, Germany
  • 1993: Los Cuadernos Insomnes , Museo de Arte Contemporáneo Alfredo Zalce, Morella, Michoacán, Mexico
  • 1993: Death of Taste , Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum Chicago, USA
  • 1993: Erotica , Galeria Juan Martin Mexico City, Mexico
  • 1996: Francisco Toledo, Master Printmaker , Latin American Masters Beverly Hills, USA
  • 1996: Surrealism in Latin American Art , Bochum, Germany
  • 1996: Selection of Latin American Masters , Mary-Anne Martin / Fine Art New York, USA
  • 1998: Summer Group Show , Jason McCoy Gallery New York, USA
  • 2000: Francisco Toledo , Centro de Arte Reina Sofia Madrid , Spain

Awards and honors

Quotes about and from Francisco Toledo

  • Christian Viveros-Faune in "Art in America" ​​about Toledo's work:

"Toledo's work is a seamless meshing of global and local cultures and high art. Dream images from his childhood are fused with pre-Columbian symbolism and myriad references to the work of Dubuffet, Miro, Tapies, Klee, Tamayo, Blake, Goya, Ensor and Durer, among other artists, and also to the writing of figures like Kafka and Borges. Snakes and turtles abound, as do rabbits and coyotes, bats and toads, crickets and dogs, as well as human figures from Mexican history, cycling from one work to another in a dizzying bestiary that is part ancient codex, part intensely modern graffiti. Toledo's work is based in part on the largely misunderstood, shamanistic notion of the nagual, the belief that each human's fate is intertwined with that of an Aztec spirit in animal form. "

“Toledo's work seamlessly blends global and regional culture with great art. Dream images from his childhood are created with pre-Columbian symbolism and countless references to the work of many other artists - but above all by Dubuffet, Miro, Tapies, Klee, Tamayo, Blake, Goya, Ensor and Dürer - and with the work of writers like Kafka and Borges , merged. His pictures are teeming with snakes and turtles, rabbits and coyotes, bats and toads, crickets and dogs, alongside human figures from Mexican history. From one picture to another, an alternating and confusing bestiary - on the one hand part of an ancient code and at the same time modern graffiti. Toledo's work is based in part on the largely misunderstood shamanic conception of the nagual  - the belief that every human fate is intertwined with an Aztec spirit in animal form. "

"His work is the product of a fantasy in which the wonderful is a logical necessity."

A fictional interview with Francisco Toledo

The answers come from Francisco Toledo and the report are "Toledo's colorful dream" ( Ref : Petra Mikutta, 2000) removed.

  • Are you proud of your ancestors?  - “To my parents and grandparents. The pride does not go back much further. I am a global citizen, multiracial like 99 percent of all people. Two of my five children are half Danish. Pure Indians only exist in the minds of romantics. "
  • Where does the great success of artists like Rufino Tamayo, Rodolfo Nieto, Rodolfo Murales, Sergio Hernández, José Villalobos or Manuel Jiménez Ramírez, all of whom come from Oaxaca, come from. Is it because of the art college?  - “No way, it's incredibly bad. It is due to the cheap rents and the insane number of shopping enthusiasts. Academies are all no good. You can't teach art to anyone. You have to discover it within yourself. Life is the school. I am completely self-taught and still learn every day. "
  • Why did you come back to Oaxaca?  - “Because of the climate. Paris and London are too cold. New York too, and Mexico City is too dirty. It's perfect here. "
  • Art historians claim that this is where they found their way back to their Zapotec roots.  - “It is unbelievable what kind of nonsense I have read about myself. The truth is very simple: I paint without thinking, I neither want to depict nor express anything. I have about as much knowledge of Zapotec myths as every travel guide says. But no sooner do I paint a sandal than it is attributed to my aunt, the shoemaker. Nonsense! As soon as I paint an iguana or a rabbit, these people are already claiming that I represent nahua. Nonsense! I paint animals, especially insects, because they are beautiful and crawl around everywhere. I would prefer to paint my children, but they don't stand still. "
  • Then is it wrong to say that your art is devoted to pre-colonial themes?  - “My art is international, not pre-colonial. Picasso is not traded as a native Spanish artist either, although he paints bulls. "
  • You went to Paris when you were 19. Were you afraid of the European art scene?  - “I didn't doubt for a second that I would make it. Gallery owners immediately bought pictures from me as if they were just waiting for me. "
  • And is Oaxaca de Juarez the best place for you now?  - “I love art. There can't be enough art anywhere. So why not here? "
  • And where can you eat well here?  - "You can forget all of the restaurants here - too many tourists."

literature

  • Erika Billeter, André Stoll, Francisco Toledo: Fabulous animals from Oaxaca: Francisco Toledo illustrates the “Zoologiá Fantástica” by Jorge Luis Borges. Swiridoff, Künzelsau 2001, ISBN 3-934350-41-0 .
  • Petra Mikutta: Toledo's colorful dream. In: Siebo Heinken (Ed.): Merian Mexico. Vol. 53 (2000) / 1. Jahreszeiten-Verlag, Hamburg, 2000, ISBN 3-7742-6501-1 , pp. 74-83.
  • Markus Raab: Francisco Toledo - Identity through Myth and Legend. In: 7th International Photo Triennial Esslingen 2007. Verlag für modern art Nuremberg, Nuremberg 2007, ISBN 978-3-939738-58-9 .
  • Markus Raab: About humor and death in the work of Francisco Toledo. In: Francisco Toledo or the triumph of death: woodcuts. Municipal Art Museum Spendhaus, Reutlingen, 2001, ISBN 978-3-933820-37-2 .

Web links

Commons : Francisco Toledo  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Jonathan Kandell: Francisco Toledo, Celebrated Mexican Artist and Arts Philanthropist, Dies at 79. In: The New York Times . September 6, 2019, accessed on September 7, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Óscar Rodríguez: Francisco Toledo, artista oaxaqueño muere a los 79 años. In: milenio.com. September 5, 2019, accessed September 6, 2019 (Spanish).
  3. ^ Historico galardonados: Francisco Benjamín López Toledo: Premio Nacional de Bellas Artes. Secretaría de Educación Pública , accessed September 6, 2019 (Spanish).
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on October 18, 2005 .
personal data
SURNAME Toledo, Francisco
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lopez Toledo, Francisco Benjamin (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Mexican painter
DATE OF BIRTH 17th July 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Juchitán de Zaragoza , Oaxaca
DATE OF DEATH 5th September 2019
Place of death Oaxaca de Juarez