Whitechapel
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77-82 Whitechapel High Street
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Francisco Toledo
dal 13/4/2000 al 7/6/2000
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Whitechapel Art Gallery


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Francisco Toledo



 
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13/4/2000

Francisco Toledo

Whitechapel, London


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First comprehensive show for 20 years of work by the most important and controversial artist working in Mexico today

"Toledo is animistic, rational, ferociously sexual, enamoured of the abstractions of nature, capable of staggering brusqueness and timid tenderness..."
Carlos Monsiváis

Francisco Toledo (b. 1940) is the most important and controversial artist working in Mexico today. Internationally revered, he is also notoriously elusive and the Whitechapel is honoured to stage his first comprehensive exhibition for twenty years. Toledo's work is celebrated for its highly charged images that draw on human, animal, mineral and spiritual life. They are executed in vivid graphic detail, suffused with an air of violence, irony and eroticism, and realised with potent combinations of organic materials.

Toledo arrived in Paris aged 19 and was showing in leading galleries throughout Europe and New York within 5 years. Despite his success he returned to Mexico in 1965, with a deep interest in recovering elements of his native Zapotec ethnicity and the cultural mixes particular to the Isthmus region. He has since explored both indigenous and world-wide cultures in his work, freely associating direct observations from nature with metaphors from literature and art. References to Blake, Goya, Ensor, Dürer, Klee, Miró, and writers like Kafka and Borges, become entwined with imagery from popular Indian fables and the political history of Mexico to create strange, harrowing visions like a woman overwhelmed by predatory fish and a human skeleton trapped within a grasshopper. More recently he has concentrated on self portraits, close anatomical studies of small creatures and temporary works that disappear in the rain.

Since the eighties Toledo has led a parallel life, actively engaged in social projects, running a publishing house and transforming colonial buildings in Oaxaca into cultural centres. They now house remarkable collections of graphics and photographs, as well as spaces for exhibitions and films and a library for the blind, used by locals and visitors. His original artistic vision, zealous insistence on the holistic role of artists in society and radical cultural interventions have been admired and emulated by younger artists and curators such as Gabriel Orozco, Francis Alÿs, Cuauhtémoc Medina and Olivier Debroise.

A unique 160 page catalogue, published by Turner Libros and available in English and Spanish, will include essays by Dr Dawn Ades and Carlos Monsiváis, reproductions of 100 works and a detailed chronology.

Curated by the Director, Catherine Lampert, and organised in collaboration with the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico and el Museo de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid.

Supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Mexican Institute for International Co-operation (IMEXCI), the Mexican Embassy; Instituto Anglo-Mexicano de Cultura; Sol Imported Beer; Fomento Cultural Banamex, Visiting Arts, and the Museums and Galleries Commission through the Government Indemnity.

For more information call Roger Tatley (020 7522 7880) or Rebecca Morrill (020 7522 7898).


Para Toledo / For Toledo
Wednesday 24 May
6.00 pm in gallery cafe
FREE

Informal event to celebrate exhibiting artist, Francisco Toledo's artistic relationship and connections to poetry. Readings selected by Stephen Watts and read by: Diego de Jesus, Adriana Diaz Enciso and Stephen Watts.

The reading will be followed by an informal discussion and refreshments.

Whitechapel Art Gallery
80 Whitechapel High St, E1 7QX
Rec.Info 020 7522 7878/Enq
020 7522 7888
Daily 11-5, Wed 11-8, closed Mondays

IN ARCHIVIO [117]
Emily Jacir / Artists' Film International
dal 29/9/2015 al 23/1/2016

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