Mexico · Mexico City / c. 1940 · relief print

Taller de Gráfica Popular broadsheet

A workshop makes a public argument

Taller de Gráfica Popular broadsheet
Broadsheet: the ballad of Mr. Grasshopper · Taller de Gráfica Popular · c. 1940 · Wikimedia Commons · CC0 1.0

A Taller de Gráfica Popular broadsheet in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, released as CC0. The ballad criticises a corrupt middleman.

Downloaded from Wikimedia Commons at a 1600px rendering; converted to a JPEG working master and a WebP reading copy, maximum 1400px, quality 80; no content retouching.

The Taller de Gráfica Popular was founded in Mexico City in 1937 as a collective workshop. Its artists made cheap prints, broadsheets and posters for unions, peasant organisations and political campaigns. This broadsheet tells a ballad about a corrupt middleman who exploits peasants; the print turns a popular song into a visual argument. The workshop’s collective model matters as much as any single artist: it asks who owns the means of image-making and who gets to appear in the picture. The Met’s CC0 release makes the image available, but the political history still needs reading.

Date
c. 1940 · relief print
Maker / designer
Taller de Gráfica Popular
Material
Relief print on paper
Context
A collective print workshop associated with the Mexican left; the Met holds this broadsheet as CC0.

Evidence: Date is a period or later photograph · Place established

Historical record

Source & further looking

The Metropolitan Museum of Art · Taller de Gráfica Popular search ↗

Wikimedia Commons · TGP broadsheet ↗

Open object / Compare ↗