Kyron Ediciones Gráficas Limitadas
Cruz Verde #5
Barrio del Niño Jesús
Coyoacán 04330
México, D.F.
México
e-mail: kyvlady@df1.telmex.net.mx

Graphing the New Directions of Mexican Art

The artist's print has played a major role in twentieth century Mexican art. The original print media are as often a first choice of expression for contemporary artists as they were for the artists of the early twentieth century. For such contemporary masters as José Luis Cuevas and Francisco Toledo, printmaking is their principal medium of artistic expression. In a similar manner the Mexican artists of the early twentieth century in general handled the essential elements of graphic imagery "light and shadow" with such mastery that color was of secondary importance. Such outstanding artists as Diego Rivera, Leopoldo Méndez and Alfredo Zalce were first and foremost graphic artists. Rivera created his fresco paintings in black and white and added color in a manner not unlike the "colorizing" of motion pictures.

In the work of the painters José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros and Rufino Tamayo the vibration of color fused with the oscillation of light and shadow into one immutable and incorruptible unit. Although Tamayo--Mexico's archetypal colorist--added a palette of bright, vibrant color to his painting he was, nevertheless, a graphic artist. Tamayo's visual expression like that of Rivera issued forth from delineation; color being an additive.

The Mexican artists born during and after the decade of the 20s benefited from both the rich graphic and the color legacies left to them by their artistic forefathers. The artists proved that color and graphic description could merge, but the art theoreticians insisted that they couldn't; that graphic description alone was the true Mexican vision. And the on-going polemic between redundant culturecrat and innovative artist continues...

But regardless of reiterative doctrine, the artists of mid-century who envisioned their painting in color also envisioned lithographs in color. In order to bring lithography into their scope they needed to amplify the scale of the print and to expand and intensify the register of color. This could not be achieved in Mexico where lithography had obeyed the authorities and not the needs of the artists. Mexican artist-lithographers would have to work in European and a few American lithographic ateliers. By the time KYRON was founded in Mexico City in 1972, Mexican artists were well adept in large-scale, color lithography. KYRON's contribution to Mexican art, therefore, was to bring the resources of European and American ateliers to Mexico.

Sooner or later, when the arts of the print in Mexico achieve recognition on printmaking's own terms and cease to be looked at as offshoots of painting and/or drawing, it will be discovered that many contemporary masters are first and foremost printmakers. Maximino Javier, Lucía Maya and Remigio Valdés de Hoyos are continuously involved in the making of prints. Perhaps in due time the painter Francisco Corzas and the Cuban ceramist Alfredo Sosabravo will also be recognized first and foremost as printmakers.

Through lithography, the Costa Rican sculptor Francisco Zúñiga merged sculptural illusion, drawing and the brushwork of a painter into a medium of expressive visual possibilities unattainable in any other way. Zúñiga's seemingly limitless expressive exploration into texture and tonality has attracted many painters to create their first images directly on stone. Such was the case of Leonora Carrington and Armando Morales. Rufino Tamayo's last works of his long and richly