A Virtual Portfolio of Works in Homage to Leopoldo Méndez
Chronology
1902. Méndez is born in Mexico City on June 30, the youngest of eight children.
1917-1919. Youngest student to attend the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts.
1920-1922. Further studies at the first, experimental "plein-air" school in Chimalistac. Teaches drawing and crafts in elementary school. Joins the Stridentist movement. Creates Art-Deco-like illustrations for magazines and reviews. Is an assistant's asssistant scene designer.
1925-1930. Makes his first woodcut. Moves to Jalapa with Stridentists. Invited to Veracruz to direct the review, Norte. Designs book jackets, creates posters on social problems, and contributes work to cultural and left-oriented magazines and newspapers. Joins CPM (Communist Party of Mexico). Forms lifelong friendship with the American-born, Pablo O'Higgins. Co-founds LEAR (Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas). Active in the Cultural Missions (a program not unlike "Art in the Schools" in the United States). Receives a professorship, and on first trip (1930) to the USA is given a two-person show with Carlos Merida at Jake Zeitlin's bookstore/gallery in Los Angeles. Makes engravings for limited edition books in Los Angeles and Mexico.
1931-1936. Go-founds LIP (Intellectual Proletarian Struggle). Works for the SEP (Secretariat of Public Education) and, as Chief of the Drawing Section of INBA (National Institute of Fine Arts) organizes a collaborative printmaking workshop there for lithography and engraving (first of its kind in Mexico). Two-person show with Mérida at Milwaukee Art Institute, followed by solo exhibit of 30 prints. Solo exhibition in Galeria Posada, Mexico City. Prints and drawings for radical newspapers and books. Founding member of LEAR (League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers). Receives a professorship in Morelia and is commissioned to paint a mural. Solo show at Paul Elder Gallery, San Francisco. Appointed Head, Cultural Aesthetics and Journalism at the Worker's University. One of four artists to paint a mural in the Talleres Gráficos de la Naci6n. Receives a commission for a mural in the National Teachers School; not executed. Group show at the ACA Gallery in NYC.
1937-1944. Co-founds world-renowned Taller de Gráfica Popular, though he is its acknowledged leader, mover, and shaker. Gives inaugural address at National Congress of Artists and Writers. Contributes anti-Franco prints and other anti-fascist works to various media, including posters. Wins a Guggenheim Fellowship to the USA (1939). Offers summer course in printmaking to US students at the Taller. Falsely imprisoned, as a result of Siqueiros' involvement in failed Trotsky assassination. Designs Tina Modotti's funerary headstone. La Estampa Mexicana publishes "25 Prints of Leopoldo Méndez" (1943). Illustrates the award-winning "Incidentes Melodicos del Mundo Irracional" with 40 engravings and scratchboard drawings (1944).
1945-1959. Major solo show at Art Institute of Chicago; creates an engraving masterpiece, "Lo que puede venir," for Institute. Ousted from the CPM for being an "Imperialist agent!" Co-founds an alternative political party that becomes the nucleus of the Partido Popular. He and O'Higgins paint a 69 square meter fresco for the Maternity Hospital #1. Contributes to the widely-known portfolio, "Estampas de la revolución mexicana." Is a member of the Mexican delegation to the Warsaw Congres of Intellectuals for Peace, where he meets Picasso. Travels throughout Europe. Creates a 24 square meter graphic mural on lucite. Writes the prologue for "The TGP: Twelve Years of Collective Works of Art," and another for "Printmaking and the Polish Book,"an exhibition at INBA. Wins the World Council's International Peace Prize. Visits the Soviet Union. Engraves another large plastic mural for Automex. Becomes a candidate for the 9th district in Mexico City - - and loses. Leaves the Partido Popular. Promotes the idea which leads to the creation of the FEPM and his posting as Director of the Editorial Board, along with a distinguished group of colleagues; they turn out a magnificent clutch of books on the arts of Mexico. Travels to Holland to supervise the printing of "La pintura de la revolución mexicana."
1960-1968. Receives the Posada Prize at the 2nd InterAmerican Biennial of Painting, Printmaking, and Sculpture in Mexico City and a Silver Medal at the Ist Latin-American Printmaking Competition held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Withdraws from the TGP. Travels to the Soviet Union again, on invitation from Soviet artists to participate in their national arts congress. INBA sponsors a major retrospective of hundreds of his works on his 60th birthday. He edits a landmark book on the work of Posada for FEPM. Illustrates Manuel Maples Arce's autobiography with 30 intaglio prints. Solo show at the Villa Caliente Galleries in San Diego, California. Becomes a founding member of the Academy of Arts, Mexico. Economic necessity forces him to sell more than 500 prints and drawings to the collector, Salomón Marcovich.
1969. Finishes his editorial work on "Lo efímero y etermo del arte popular Mexicana." (This major work on Mexican folk art was published two years after his death). Méndez dies on February 8.
-Jules Heller