The exhibition brings together scenes of recreation and well-being in post-revolutionary Mexico.

▲ The exhibition's opening is the painting "Day of Saint John" by Julio Castellanos, whose 120th birthday will be celebrated on October 3. Photo: Fomento Cultura Banamex

Merry MacMasters

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, September 7, 2025, p. 2

The Valparaíso Forum launched a new series of exhibitions titled Emblematic Works from the Banamex Painting Collection. The first exhibition in the series, Mexican Aquatic Festival: Julio Castellanos, is based on the painting Día de San Juan (ca. 1939), by the painter born in 1905, whose 120th birthday will be celebrated on October 3. The series seeks to generate new interpretations of the most significant paintings in the collection. It includes two sketches Castellanos made for the painting.

Mexican Water Festival: Julio Castellanos explores the recreational and physical culture of post-revolutionary Mexico through 13 pieces, including painting, photography, drawing, engraving, and film. It features works by engraver Leopoldo Méndez, photographers Lola Álvarez Bravo and Agustín Víctor Casasola, architect Fernando Beltrán, and painter Adolfo Best Maugard, whose film Humanity is featured. The pieces visually document and reinterpret life in beach resorts and recreational spaces during a period when the Mexican government promoted cultural policies aimed at social well-being and citizenship building.

Castellanos is a key figure in modern Mexican art, although his career was cut short when he died at the age of 41. The painting in question depicts the tradition of bathing on June 24, the feast day of Saint John the Baptist. The artist revisits this ritual to portray not only popular customs but also the country's progress toward public hygiene and sports as modern practices.

His early death removed Castellanos from the public eye. Born in Mexico City, his father, Julio Castellanos Hernández, was a close friend of Juan de Dios Peza, Jesús Valenzuela, and Luis G. Urbina, and frequented the artistic circles of the Porfiriato. He encouraged his son's early interest in drawing. In high school, young Julio met Saturnino Herrán (1887–1918) by chance, and became his disciple.

After about four years in the United States, where his mother sent him to remove him from bohemian life, he returned to Mexico. In addition to attending open-air schools, around 1924 he met Manuel Rodríguez Lozano, then head of the Elementary Education Art Department, who encouraged him to paint again and became his friend.

Featured collaborations

In the years prior to the production of Día de San Juan, Castellanos was considered one of the painters of the Los Contemporáneos group for his participation in the stage designs for the Teatro de Ulises. In the early 1930s, he worked with María Asúnsolo to organize the University Gallery. In 1932, he assisted Juan O'Gorman in creating the murals for the Azcapotzalco Library and, at the same time, prepared sketches for a decoration at the Café La Blanca, then located on Gante Street.

Shortly after, he began painting frescoes at the Gabriela Mistral School and decorated the staircase of the Héroes de Churubusco elementary school in Coyoacán with a festive theme. According to art critic Olivier Debroise, “the turbulent children's games depicted on three adjacent panels, with their bold details and feverish movement, immediately precede Saint John's Day.”

In his book Figures in the Tropics, Mexican Art 1920-1940, Debroise writes that Saint John's Day "inaugurates a new era, perhaps the best, in Julio Castellanos' painting. The painting originates from a photograph by Lola Álvarez Bravo, also titled Saint John's Day and taken at the Revolución resort."

He points out that all of the painter's paintings are arranged frontally and with a very shallow depth of field. However, in Saint John's Day, "space is opened up through a complex interplay of multiple perspectives. The interior breadth of the painting suggests a monumental composition; however, the oil painting measures only 40 by 48 centimeters."

For Debroise, Saint John's Day is an atypical frontal group painting. In the foreground, he "installs a virginal figure modestly wrapped in a towel that blurs her form and sinks between her legs." The only figure aware of being observed, he is also "the only one who hides his nakedness." Meanwhile, the children in the painting "belong to an almost unreal world, idyllic and unprejudiced, asexual, but not desexualized."

According to Debroise, the paintings Día de San Juan, Ángeles robachicos and El bohío maya (1945) “form a sort of trilogy in which Castellanos expresses his particular vision of the Mexican world.”

The Valparaíso Forum is located at Venustiano Carranza 60, Historic Center.

Juan Carlos G. Partida

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, September 7, 2025, p. 3

Guadalajara, Jalisco, From Juchitán to the Universe: The Work of Francisco Toledo is a retrospective exhibition of the Oaxacan artist's work, including at least 70 graphic pieces. It is on display starting this weekend at the Guadalajara City Museum, with free admission and open until December.

The project, described by its organizers as the most significant exhibition held in recent years at the City Museum, was organized in collaboration with the International Museum of Art (MInArt) and the Benjamín Fernández collection. It was curated by Maythé Loza and Alberto Ramos.

The exhibition can be seen in five galleries of the museum and, according to the organizers, offers a "journey through a creative universe populated by animals, fantastic beings, and symbols of nature," with works dating from the 1960s until shortly before his death in 2019.

During the exhibition's opening, it was recalled that Toledo was much more than a visual artist, and that his legacy is also linked to cultural activism, the defense of indigenous languages, and the preservation of his people's identity—causes that shaped his life and work.

It was emphasized that the Juchitán master "marked a before and after in Mexican culture" with his work, laden with symbolism, identity, and social commitment, which has been exhibited in major venues around the world.

Among the works on display are prints, paintings, and pieces that combine the traditional and the contemporary, the main characteristic of Toledo, "an essential figure in Mexican art."

Empathetic Creator

Maythé Loza explained that Toledo liked to reflect what he experienced, “that's why the toads, the crickets, the pigs, because it's something that's real and surrounds me, something I live,” she said.

▲ Woman and Lion, by Francisco Toledo, (ca. 1990). Photo courtesy of the venue.

“Reflecting that naturalness was important to him; we also have this line of the erotic, or the references to his family, his mother, his father. All of this makes him very empathetic to everyone,” she said.

He recalled that Juchitán was not the only place where he lived in his loves and work, but also the city of Oaxaca or Etla, a municipality near the archaeological site of Monte Albán, where one of his projects, the handmade paper factory, continues its activities, despite the artist's death.

“In Oaxaca, he created the Graphic Arts Research Institute, which houses the largest bibliographic collection of graphic art in Mexico, which he sold to the state government for one peso,” he recalled.

Loza said Toledo's community work is clearly reflected in the retrospective and that there are many anecdotes from his time traveling through Juchitán.

"The kite image of him with the children is real, not a pose. He was deeply loved by his community, because he loved them very much."

Alberto Ramos, the exhibition's other curator, noted that Toledo always sought to acknowledge his origins, identify with them, and feel that he belonged to a specific cultural group, which is clearly communicated in his work.

"It's his magic, not just emotions, traditions, and sociocultural contexts, but the fact that he managed to touch the hearts of people around the world, and that makes him such a valuable artist," he asserted.

The opening of the exhibition coincided with the sixth anniversary of the Oaxacan artist's death and has captured the attention of the general public, fine arts students, and tourists, who will have until December to admire his work at the exhibition center located in downtown Guadalajara.

▲ Dozens of protesters burst into the opening of the Francisco Toledo retrospective at the Guadalajara City Museum with banners and protests. Photo by Arturo Campos

Juan Carlos G. Partida

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, September 7, 2025, p. 3

Guadalajara, Jal., During the opening of the Francisco Toledo retrospective at the Guadalajara City Museum, the local artistic community demonstrated to demand that the Jalisco government locate the artist Francisca (Frany) Arteaga, who was deprived of her liberty on August 27 by a group of armed men who took her from the gallery where she was teaching a workshop.

Frany Arteaga, a 35-year-old artist, painter, and teacher, was abducted against her will on August 27 in Guadalajara by an armed group that entered the Casa Natalia gallery, where she was teaching a drawing workshop for children. According to witnesses, the captors were looking for someone else.

Since her disappearance, the artistic community and civil society have demanded her return. Through social media with hashtags like #DondeEstaFrany and #LaCulturaNoCalla, they have widely shared her image, reaching a wide audience.

They have also carried out artistic interventions, posted posters, and, before the September 4th raid on the Toledo exhibition, on August 30th family members, friends, and other artists gathered outside the Government Palace to demand an answer to the disappearance and immediate action to rescue Frany alive.

The unexpected arrival of those protesting Toledo's disappearance during the opening of the retrospective included a performance, banners, signs, slogans, and the reading of a manifesto to remember the teacher, the friend, the artist who "today has become an absence."

The cultural community has called for creative actions such as posting posters with Frany's face, creating stencils, and other interventions in public spaces to keep her memory alive and the demand for her return alive.

Symbolic sit-ins and pot-banging protests have also been called for in front of cultural spaces, although no specific dates have been specified for each of these activities, and the call remains open.

▲ Huayrapamushka performed on August 20th at the Fernando Calderón Theater in Zacatecas. Photo courtesy of the group.

Alfredo Valadez Rodríguez

Correspondent

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, September 7, 2025, p. 4

Zacatecas, Zac., A special recital at the Fernando Calderón Theater in the capital of Zacatecas commemorated the 50th anniversary of the creation of the university folkloric and protest music group Huayrapamushka: Los Hijos del Viento, through which dozens of virtuoso men and women of music and song from the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (UAZ) have passed.

The group's founding musicians performed at the commemorative concert: Marie Annick Morisse—a French flamenco singer and dancer who arrived from Paris accompanied by Zacatecas painter and sculptor Ismael Guardado—Javier del Muro Escareño, Francisco Javier Saldaña López, and Carlos García Sánchez. These four were the precursors to the university group in 1972, although it wasn't until 1975 that the then-rector, Jesús Manuel Díaz Casas, formally established it as part of the university, and other members began to join.

Huayrapamushka is an Ecuadorian term, derived from the indigenous Quechua language, meaning "children of the wind." Marie Annick Morisse explained during the recital that it could also be translated as "children of the bitch," as it was used derogatorily to refer to the offspring of native women raped by the Spanish during the Conquest, during forced interbreeding.

Now, centuries later, in Zacatecas, the land of the Chichimecas who fought Captain Pedro de Alvarado during the Spanish colonization, the members of the group decided, at the suggestion of the Frenchwoman Morisse, to name themselves Huayrapamushka and be identified as Los Huayras.

Today, they are the UAZ university reference for recovering and keeping alive through music the popular leftist ideology of the era in which Latin America suffered coups d'état and student repression, by interpreting authors and groups such as Atahualpa Yupanqui, Víctor Jara, Violeta Parra, Los Olimareños, Alfredo Zitarrosa, Daniel Viglietti, Inti-Illimani, Quilapayún, Los Calchakis, Silvio Rodríguez, Noel Nicola and Pablo Milanés, among many others.

But Huayrapamushka, explained Esaúl Arteaga Domínguez (a former member of the group, of which he was a guitarist for more than 30 years) in an interview with this newspaper, has also given a primary space to the rescue and promotion of traditional Mexican music, by including corridos, valonas, polkas, huapangos and sones, as well as interpretations of singers such as Óscar Chávez, José de Molina and Judith Reyes.

Among many others who have participated prominently with Los Huayras are Adrián Villagómez (current director of the group and first voice), José Manuel Pinedo Chávez, Alejandra Aguilera Miranda, Joaquín Correa, Ignacio Rosales Encina, Verónica Dávila Navarro, César Ortiz Estrada, Roberto Ibarra Medrano, Nicolás Acosta García, Aída Martínez Olivares, Miguel Carlos Ruedas and Antonio Dueñez, who with their talent in singing or playing –some play up to three instruments– have forged the history of this group for half a century.

Arteaga, who has also written, photographed and documented some of the main events of Huayrapamushka, told La Jornada how, during the 70s, 80s and 90s, times of student and social effervescence in Zacatecas, the group offered "concerts in the UAZ schools, since they responded to all the invitations from social and student organizations in the state, as well as from workers, settlers and peasants.

“They were regularly invited to national and international festivals organized by government cultural institutions and universities… places like Oaxaca, Guerrero, San Luis Potosí, Querétaro, Chihuahua, and Monterrey.”

In his performance on August 20 in Zacatecas, Huayrapamushka kicked off his 50th anniversary concert, before some 500 attendees gathered at the Fernando Calderón Theater, with a must-see song: The Right to Live in Peace, by Chilean singer Víctor Jara.

They also performed La naranjita, a Bolivian carnivalito; Subo, an Argentine vidala; Pampa Lirima, a Chilean one; Lo que más quiero, by Violeta Parra; Tierra mestiza, by Gerardo Tamez; Tinku , a Bolivian one; La marcha del indio, by Afranio Parra from Colombia; Sobre tu playa, by the Chilean group Inti Illimani; La muralla, by the Cuban Nicolás Guillen; and the closing performance was performed by all the musicians present of El pueblo Unido, by the group Quilapayún.

The audience gave a standing ovation.

▲ The artist in his exhibition , *Unbearable Modernity*, secondhand drawings. Photo courtesy of the Taller Popular de Oaxaca.

From the Editorial Staff

La Jornada Newspaper, Sunday, September 7, 2025, p. 4

Through 40 illustrations, mostly on brown paper, artist Daniel Guzmán “presents the process of unfolding and dissolving of the masculine being, a violent and destructive agent, that man who should be dead,” in the exhibition La modernidad insufrible, dibujo de segunda mano (Insufferable Modernity, Second-Hand Drawings), on display at the Taller Popular in Oaxaca.

The exhibition is part of the project The Man Who Should Be Dead (EHQDEM), a series of collections from the Tamayo, National Art Museum (Munal), Amparo, and Contemporary Art Museum (Marco).

In 2017, Guzmán began a series of drawings, which he divided into chapters; the most recent presents an investigation of moments and scenes inhabited by the man he speaks of. “Drawings that are a human mixture and a breeding ground prepared with portions of the accompaniment of William Burroughs, Jorge Luis Borges, Mariana Enríquez, Ricardo Piglia, Leila Guerriero, Lucia Berlin, Paul B. Preciado, Roberto Bolaño, Phillip K. Dick, and Mark Fisher, as well as films and other artifacts of so-called popular culture. From cradle to grave, customs, values, and beliefs are inheritances, knowledge, used junk, passed from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, and from generation to generation: secondhand things,” the artist details in the text accompanying the exhibition.

Guzmán, whose drawings are the result of a constant and disciplined search, guided by the intuition of the hand that translates the imagination, believes that “like walking Xipe Totecs, we carry the infamous skin of modern and contemporary history, the horror of bloody and violent habits, the garments of multiple personalities: king, master, businessman, capitalist, colonialist, fascist, Nazi: all white, all black, all red, all yellow. To hide the ruin and the slaughterhouse that the planet we inhabit has become, we invented our personalized, digital and portable concentration camp, which separates us from the horror of this end of the world until destiny catches up with us.”

In a conversation with Mónica de la Torre, the artist mentioned that throughout his life he has had a connection with literature, “I love books, I like reading, my first love was books, more than the plastic or visual arts, because as a child, my father bought Mexican comics at home and looked at the graphics, but more than that, I was interested in reading. When I began this series of drawings, I think the conceptual framework was like a novel or a short story, not in terms of graphics, but in terms of concepts. That's why I used subtitles to divide it.”

That's why he created a visual narrative: "Many of my earlier drawings had text taken from the newspaper or books I read; then I removed them all and kept the visual, to experience something that didn't convey meaning."

Guzmán's visual language ranges from comics to pre-Hispanic iconography, including newspapers, caricatures, and popular music. His work is characterized by the integration of elements of the urban landscape and autobiographical references.

Unbearable Modernity, Secondhand Drawings: EHQDEM by Daniel Guzmán will remain on display until October 17, 2025, at Taller Popular (Porfirio Díaz 413, Historic Center of Oaxaca) from Monday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.