Exhibition at CASA compiles decades of complicity between Toledo and the Arvil gallery

The artist, cultural manager and activist Francisco Toledo (1940-2019) carried out graphic projects for almost three decades together with the Arvil gallery, which celebrates its 55th anniversary in 2024.

Highlights New catechism for reluctant Indians, It consisted of the intervention of nine black and white metal plates from the colonial era in order to make new prints. The engravings were accompanied by texts by the writer Carlos Monsiváis (1938-2010).

These plates were donated to the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca (Iago) by Armando Colina, director of the Arvil gallery. For this reason, the exhibition is organized Francisco Toledo: Metal plates and graphic works that he created with them, which opens today at the San Agustín Arts Center (CASA), Oaxaca.

In addition to the plates and engravings produced, works from the series will also be displayed Toledo/Guchachi’, Toledo/Chilam Balam, Toledo/Sahagún, as well as unknown material.

“When we did Chilam Balam, “I asked Francisco to make the cover an engraving signed by him and handwritten with the title. I also suggested that he write the text for this album and illustrate it. The originals he worked on will be shown. Also two portraits he made of me in the 60s, when we met, which no one has seen, because they were in my bedroom,” Armando Colina tells The Day.

An antique dealer offered the plates in question to Víctor Acuña (1939-2021), director and co-founder of Arvil. “There were 75 of them and we bought them. We asked Nunik Sauret to clean them and print them to see the content and condition of each one, because some were half broken. When they were delivered, they surprised us, because there were some that were practically comical. In one, for example, it was seen that the artist started working on it from the bottom, and when he got to the top the character’s head didn’t fit, so he placed it to one side.

“When we showed the material to Toledo, he was impressed and wanted to intervene. When we showed it to Monsiváis he said: ‘I write’. It turns out to be his only fictional text, since he was a chronicler. Toledo chose nine plates to work on. He did all this work for Arvil Gráfica, a company that Víctor and I created because we realized that our sponsors did not understand that a graphic work is a serialized, signed and numbered original.”

Arvil Gráfica made editions of 50 pieces; however, only 25 plates were made, because they were very fragile. They dated back to the 18th and 19th centuries, and came from the mountains of Tlaxcala and Puebla, from popular chapels, Colina notes.

The gallery owner maintained a 60-year friendship and promotion relationship with Toledo, during which time they carried out countless projects together: “In 1963, I opened Dalís, a record, art and book store on Amberes Street, between Hamburgo and Reforma. One day I was alone with my assistant when a good-looking person with long hair and sandals came in. What caught my attention even more was when he approached the art books. Just as he came in, he left. A few days later a mutual friend, the painter Roberto Donís, came to see me, bringing a group of works on paper.

“He told me: ‘Armando, I have this friend who just came back from Europe and does this.’ I was dazzled by the pieces; however, they were too expensive for me. They were worth 40 dollars. I couldn’t resist and bought one. A few days later he came back: ‘Armando, my friend tells me that he does portraits for you and you give him art books.’ We negotiated. He met me in an old building behind the now defunct Latino cinema. If I remember correctly, it was a utility room. The guy wearing sandals was the artist. My biggest surprise was that he painted on the floor.”

“Something happened that marked me forever because I was there to buy what he produced. He made three portraits of me, but he didn’t like one and tore it up. His ethics left their mark on me.”

We became very good friends because, in addition to his incredible talent, I had never seen an artist with such creative and innovative capacity. He was always looking for something.

Among the countless projects they carried out together, Colina highlights the illustrations that Toledo made for The book of imaginary beings, by Jorge Luis Borges, originally published as Handbook of fantastic zoology (1957) by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, on the occasion of the publishing house’s half-century.

It turned out that the artist had made more images than were included in the commemorative book, which were acquired by Arvil and promoted around the world as a collection. They were exhibited in 52 places, including Tokyo, Athens, Prague, Rome, Berlin, New York and Buenos Aires.

The gallery played a fundamental role in Toledo’s acceptance of a retrospective exhibition of his work at the Whitechapel Gallery in London, which later went to the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid. heat up the squareArvil showed Fantastic Zoology at the House of the Americas, in Havana, Cuba.

After Oaxaca, the exhibition Francisco Toledo: Metal plates and the graphic work he created with them It will be housed at the Estanquillo Museum in 2025, on a date to be decided.