VARIOUS ARTISTS EL NAZISMO. Group of 10. Circa 1938.
Each 19 1/2x25 inches, 49 1/2x63 1/2 cm. Taller Edit. de Grafica Popular, [Mexico.]
Condition varies, generally B+: most taped to mount at corners and or edges. Printed on thin paper.
In 1938, the Mexican print collective, Taller Grafica Popular (TGP), began working with Liga Pro-Cultura Aleman. The league was formed by German exiles who had fled the Nazi regime and were committed to fighting the spread of fascism and Nazism in Mexico. Comprised of intellectuals who were largely left wing and anti-fascist, they organized lectures on German culture, art, music, literature and philosophy. In the fall of 1938, they organized a series of weekly lectures which were held at Mexico City's Palace of Bellas Artes, to explain negative aspects of the Nazi regime. Artists of the TGP, such as Leopoldo Mendez, Jesus Escobedo, Pablo O'Higgins, Alfredo Zalce, Angel Bracho, Raul Anguiano and Francisco Dosamantes, designed posters for each of the 18 lectures and, in a few instances, more than one for the same evening's program. The simple, two color lithographs show artistic influences of Surrealism and John Heartfield and are each a powerful visual expression. "The artists put great effort into portraying the dangers of fascism in graphic terms, and the prints are politically and stylistically sophisticated. . . [they] were printed in runs of two thousand and posted on the walls of Mexico City" (Mendez p. 135). They are among the best and most powerful early anti-Nazi propaganda that we have seen. Printed on very thin paper, very few of these have survived and rarely come to market. Mendez fig. 5.9, 5.10, 5.12 and 5.13.