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Buenos Vecinos: African-American Printmaking and the Taller de Gráfica Popular Author(s): Alison Cameron Source: Print Quarterly, Vol. 16, No. 4 (DECEMBER 1999), pp. 353-367 Published by: Print Quarterly Publications Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41824990 Accessed: 10-12-2018 14:26 UTC

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Buenos Vecinos: African- American Printmaking and the Taller de Gráfica Popular

Alison Cameron

This article is the igg8 winner of the Reha and. Dave Williams Prize

for an outstanding contribution on American printmaking

When Hale Woodruff travelled to Mexico City in 1936 to study mural painting under Diego Rivera he opened a new chapter in Mexican and African- American cultural relations; this had begun during the heady days of the Harlem Renaissance and continued to endure throughout the post-war decades and the civil rights movements of the 1960s. At the heart of this relationship was the printmaking workshop, el Taller de Gráfica Popular , formed in Mexico City in 1937 by the muralists Leopoldo Méndez, Luis Arenal and Pablo O'Higgins. With its commitment to social concerns, equality, and collective working practises, the Taller became a magnet for a succession of important African-American printmakers throughout the 1940s and '50s, and provided the exemplar for several similar enterprises by African-American artists in the United States.

Until Woodruff's excursion, the cultural exchange between Mexican and African-American artists had

been largely one-sided; during the mid- 1920s the Mexican illustrator and caricaturist Miguel Covar- rubias had been a prominent participant in the artistic life of the Harlem Renaissance, producing lively images of Harlem nightlife, such as The Lindy Hop (fig. 194) for Vanity Fair magazine. An associate of sever- al influential African-American intellectuals, includ- ing the author Alain Locke and the poet Langston Hughes, Covarrubias also contributed illustrations for numerous African-American publications, most notably for Locke's landmark anthology of the Harlem Renaissance, The New Negro , published in 1925. The vibrancy of Harlem at this time also attracted the atten-

tion of the muralist José Clemente Orozco, who remarked on his enthusiasm for the neighbourhood during his first visit to New York in 19 19, 1 and later pro- duced a lithograph based on his observations, Vaudeville in Harlem , in 1928.

If Harlem had been an inspiration for the likes of Covarrubias and Orozco in the 1920s, then the 1930s saw the reversal of this trend, as artists throughout the United States began to look to the work of the Mexicans as a means of responding to the social, polit- ical and cultural upheavals resulting from the country's deepening economic crisis. Such interest was encour- aged by the presence in the United States of Mexico's 'big three' muralists - Orozco, Rivera and David Alfaro Siqueiros, all of whom had been invited to undertake high-profile commissions in the early years of the decade. Despite the controversies surrounding many of these projects, particularly in the case of the destruction of Rivera's mural for the Rockefeller

Center in New York in 1933, 2 the muralists' example of producing accessible and socially useful art, sponsored by the Mexican Government, was to have a profound impact on artists in the United States and provided the cornerstone for the inclusion of artistic production in President Roosevelt's 'New Deal' policy, aimed at relieving those sectors of society most affected by the Depression. The resulting initiation of the Public Works of Art Program in 1933 heralded the official endorsement of the Mexican model and launched an

unprecedented programme of public mural painting in the United States, in which African-American artists would play a significant rôle.

i. The translation of Orozco's remarks by his biographer Alma Reed state 'I found that the two most attractive and diverting places were the Harlem section, where the Negroes and Spanish Americans live, and Coney island', in Orozco , Oxford 1956, p. 97.

2. Riveras mural was whitewashed over at the request of the

patron, Nelson Rockefeller, following the artist's refusal to remove a portrait of Lenin. The controversy that this incident sparked is discussed at length by L. P. Hurlburt, The Mexican Muralists in the United States , Albuquerque, NM 1989, pp. 159-74.

PRINT QUARTERLY, XVI, 1 999, 4

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The particular influence of the Mexican Mural Movement on African-American artists has already been well documented, most significantly in the recent exhibition and publication by Lizetta LeFalle Collins, In the Spirit of Resistance : African-American Modernists and

the Mexican Muralist School .3 Indeed, quite apart from Woodruff's association with Rivera, several other African-American muralists drew directly on the Mexican example: Vertis Hayes was a pupil of Jean Chariot, one of the originell team of artists commis- sioned to participate in the Mexican Public Mural Program in the 1920s, while Charles Alston observed the work of Diego Rivera at his ill-fated Rockefeller Center project. In common with many of their white colleagues, African-American muralists employed on the initiatives of the Public Works of Art Program (later to become the Federal Art Project) found particular appeal in the Mexicans' commitment to social con- cerns. Radicalized by the hardships of the Depression that had, in turn, intensified racial tension and inequal- ity, and imbued with a sense of public duty to produce works of art with a positive didactic function, African- American muralists sought in their Mexican mentors a means with which they could engage the public in those issues most pertinent to their struggle, as LeFalle Collins observes:

The Mexican muralists' engaged themselves direct- ly in the social, economic, and political conditions of the common man. They expressed and encouraged communal interaction toward the shared goals of fighting oppression and celebrating their cultural heritage. This fully integrated political program undergirding the Mexicàn work became a model for African-American artists.4

This heightened sense of social awareness and shared aspirations between African-American artists working for the Federal Art Project also led to greater cooperation and collaboration. In much the same way as Rivera, Orozco, Siqueiros and the other Mexican muralists had banded together to form the Syndicate of Workers, Technicians, Painters and Sculptors in 1923, African-American artists began to unite in pursuit of their common goals, with Charles Alston and Vertis Hayes joining forces with the sculptress Augusta Savage to form the Harlem Artists Guild in 1935. Although originally intended 'to get more black artists

on the federal projects',5 the Guild became an impor- tant forum for socially concerned African-American Artists and led to the establishment of the Harlem

Community Art Center in 1936. As a source of practi- cal support, providing employment, equipment and studio space, the Center became a locus for African-American artists in all media, including print- making, with James Lesesne Wells providing the initial inspiration for younger printmakers in the Guild, such as Charles White, Robert Blackburn and Dox Thrash.

Apart from the significance of the Federal Art Project in facilitating the exchange among Mexican and African-American artists, and in encouraging col- lective working practices, the conditions for contact between African-American printmakers and their Mexican colleagues in the Taller de Gràfica Popular were further advanced by a series of other events taking place in Mexico and the United States during the mid- 19308. In Mexico City, the activities of the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers (LEAR), for which Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O'Higgins, and Luis Arenal produced satirical black and white prints in the journal Frente a Frente , had attracted the attention of Langston Hughes, who undertook several visits on behalf of the John Reed Club of New York, with the specific purpose of cultivating cultural exchange and cooperation.6 As a result, developments in Mexican art and politics enjoyed regular exposure in the African-American journals Survey Graphic and Opportunity , for which many prominent African-American artists, most notably Aaron Douglas, also provided illustrations and prints.

Although not specifically aimed at African- American artists, the American Artists Congress in New York in 1936 also acted as an important stimulus. Attended by Hale Woodruff and addressed by Aaron Douglas,7 the Congress's emphasis on the ascendancy of Fascism in Europe and the failure of capitalism in the United Státes provided a forum for exchange among politically like-minded artists. Ably encouraged by a Mexican delegation that included Orozco and Siqueiros, the Congress was also significant in that it marked the first exhibition in the United States of lith-

ographs and woodcuts by several of the founding mem- bers of the Taller de Gràfica Popular , including Arenal, Méndez, Alfredo Zalee and Antonio Pujol. That the Mexican delegation was advocating the medium of the

3. L. LeFalle Collins, In the Spirit of Resistance : African-American Modernists and the Mexican Muralist School, The Studio Museum Harlem, New York 1997.

4. LeFalle Collins, ob. dt pp. w-w. 5. Charles Alston, quoted in M. Park and G. E. Markowitz, New

Deal for Art. Gallery Association of New York, 1077, p. 10. 6. See Collins, op. dt., p. 32. 7. Douglas's paper addressed the subject of 'The Role of the Negro

Artist in National Culture'.

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194. Miguel Covarrubias, Lindy Hop , 1936, lithograph, 323 x 245 mm (Collection of Reba and Dave Williams).

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print, rather than the public mural, to socially con- cerned artists in the United States was made manifest

in Siqueiros's address to the Congress on 15 February 1936:

A new movement has grown out of all the past expe- riences and has appeared already in Mexico. The new movement is impelled and organised by the sec- tion of plastic art of the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers. . . . The League has adopted the principle that revolutionary art is not only a problem of content or theme - but a problem of form. It has adopted the idea that revolutionary art is inseparable from forms of art which can reach the greatest number of people. ... It has adopted the principle of self-criticism as an instrument of advance. It has also adopted the principle of team- work as distinguished from isolated individual work. Instead of painting in the official buildings far from the masses, the League wants to help the Mexican workers to find a form suitable to a graphic art of revolutionary propaganda.8 Despite Siquieros's personal endorsement of this

'new movement' which would, in 1937, break away from LEAR and become the Taller de Gráfica Popular , the appeal of muralism among many African-American artists continued to prevail. A key element of mural- ism's enduring popularity lay in the Mexicans' success- ful integration of native traditions with contemporary themes, an almost irresistible model for African- American artists eager to reconcile their African heri- tage with their identity as modern Americans. Indeed, it was immediately after the Congress that Hale Woodruff began his apprenticeship under Diego Rivera in Mexico City, while that same year Charles Alston completed his mural Magic and Medicine at the Harlem Hospital in New York. For Woodruff, the appeal of Rivera's brand of muralism lay in its abili- ty to utilize allegorical monumentality as a means of effecting an enduring political statement, rather than the more immediate and direct engagement with specific issues advocated by Siqueiros, and pursued by the Taller de Gráfica Popular? This identifica- tion with Rivera's use of the historical epic mural, such as that of the Palacio Nacional cycle, The History of

Mexico (1929-42), is demonstrated in Woodruff's own Amistad murals, completed in 1939, which used the events of the Amistad slave mutiny in 1839 as a device for engaging with the contemporary struggle for equal- ity and freedom.

Although it is highly likely that Woodruff encoun- tered Leopoldo Méndez and his colleagues at the Taller during his sojourn with Rivera (indeed the existence of two woodcuts by Wpodruff made on his return to the United States, Returning Home and Sunday Promenade , suggest he did not confine his Studies to Rivera's mural technique),10 the high regard and profile enjoyed by the Mexican muralists in the United States throughout the 1930s meant that it was not until the 1940s that the influence of the Taller de Gráfica Popular truly began to emerge among African-American printmakers. Central to this development was the 'Good Neighbour Policy', aimed at promoting hemispheric unity between the United States and Latin America during World War II. The spirit of cultural diplomacy that this initiative engendered was especially beneficial to the Taller , whose artists, despite the anti-Americanism of their campaign in support of Mexico's expropriation of United States' oil concessions in 1938, found them- selves on the receiving end of numerous awards and invitations throughout the War years; both Méndez and Jesús Escobedo were awarded Guggenheim Fellowships for travel to the United States in 1940, Raúl Anguiano was invited to teach at the Art Students' League in New York in 1941, while the workshop as a whole participated in numerous high-profile exhib- itions in New York, most notably the Museum of Modern Art's 'Twenty Centuries of Mexican Art' in 1940, and the Riverside Museum's survey exhibitions of contemporary Latin American Art in 1940 and 1942.

Having actively participated in the left-wing Popular Front in support of President Lázaro Cárdenas in the late 1930s, the Taller de Gráfica Populates reputation as the exemplar of socially committed printmaking had already been firmly established in Mexico; aside from endorsing the Mexican Governments' literacy cam- paigns, oil expropriation and land redistribution pro- gramme, the Taller was also active in providing posters and pamphlets on behalf of numerous Mexican trade

8. D. Alfaro Siqueiros, The Mexican Experience in Art , Address of the Mexican Delegation to the American Artists Congress, New York, 15 February 1936.

9. Paraphrasing Woodruff himself, LeFalle Collins states: 'Woodruff was able to realise "elements within Rivera's paint- ings that made his statements more than just journalistic report- ing" and he began to understand that the key to successful protest painting was a certain amount of "artistic distance." As

he later said, "You've got to get away from your subject and then come to it on your own terms.'", p. 52.

10. It is important to note that, at the time of Woodruff's visit, Rivera had been ostracized by Mexico's artistic community because of his Trotskyist sympathies. It is therefore difficult to speculate on the extent to which Woodruff might have had access to the Taller and its members.

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195. Leopoldo Méndez, La Venganza del Pueblo , 1942, woodcut, 253 x 199 mm (Collection of Reba and Dave Williams).

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unions and labour groups. With their trademark black and white lithographs and linocuts, rooted in the pop- ular tradition of nineteenth-century satirical broad- sheets, the Taller claimed to produce a genuine art for the people, printed on cheap paper and distributed in large quantities in order that their social and political message could reach the widest audience. The collapse of the pro-Cárdenas Popular Front during the Mexican presidential elections in 1940 meant, however, that at the time of their greatest activity in the United States, the Taller were taking a much wider interest in interna- tional affairs, borne out by an emphasis in their work on the tyranny of Fascism in Europe, particularly in Spain and Germany.11 Although the Taller reciprocated the goodwill

accorded to them in the United States - most ably demonstrated by Pablo O'Higgins's 1944 poster Buenos Vecinos , Buenos Amigos , which depicts Abraham Lincoln and Benito Juárez against a background of the Mexican and United States flags, and a symbolic hand- shake between two workers - the images they exhibit- ed in the United States acted as a stark indictment of

the Americans' delay in intervening militarily in World War II. With works dating from the late 1930s depict- ing graphic accounts of Fascist atrocities in Europe, such as the collective publication La España de Franco (1938) and the illustrated El Libro Negro del Terror Nazi en Europa (see fig. 195), the Jailer's demonstration of pow- erful and explicit anti-Fascist propaganda acted as a provocative and persuasive influence on both artists and audiences alike. The immediacy and rapid devel- opment of events, and the Talleras ability to provide an instant response, also did much to promote the medi- um of the print as a forceful and effective device for artistic engagement with political issues.

The widespread exposure and acclaim for the Taller in the United States during the 'Good Neighbour' years generated interest among artists of all races, but it was the New York World's Fair in 1940 that was esp- ecially significant in raising the Talleri profile among African-American artists. Exhibiting in the Federal Art Project's American Art Today' pavilion, work by the Taller artists appeared alongside works by members of the Harlem Artists Guild, including Charles Alston and Vertis Hayes. This exhibition of over one hundred of the Talleri posters, pamphlets and folios reinforced the Project's debt to the Mexicans' example and

demonstrated the potential of the print medium as an accessible and affordable means of producing socially useful art. At a time when mural commissions

were becoming more of a rarity, particularly for African-American artists, the appearance of the Taller as an active, potent and successful enterprise, suggest- ed new avenues of collective work and social action, which would later inform the work of a number of

influential African-American artists and groups. Outstanding in this respect is the work of Elizabeth

Catlett and Charles White. Graduates of the Chicago Art Institute and Howard University, and active par- ticipants in the campaign to develop opportunities for African-American artists on the Federal Art Project, both Catlett and White were at the forefront of social-

ly concerned African-American art. Having studied alongside the Taller' s Raúl Anguiano at the Art Student's League in New York in 1941, they were anx- ious to travel to Mexico, but it was not until 1946 when White had completed his military service that the couple, financed by their Rosenwald Fellowships, were able to do so. Although originally drawn to Mexico by the work of the muralists12 (in 1943 Catlett had painted a small mural based on Miguel Covarrubias's Negro Drawings , while White had completed in 1943 a cycle at the Hampton University, The Contribution of the Negro to Democracy in America ), they soon found themselves ensconced at the Taller. Here White, guided by his mentor in Mexico, Siqueiros, worked largely in litho- graphy, whilst Catlett embraced the linocut with great enthusiasm and no small measure of technical ability. The results of these endeavours would be a critical

turning-point in African-American printmaking as, under the example of the Taller , both Catlett and White would find the means of successfully elaborating both their racial identity and social ideals in an accessible form.

The work produced by the two artists during their guest residency at the Taller between 1946 and 1947 provides the most striking example of the way in which the methods of the Taller could be harnessed to address

the concerns of socially committed African- American artists. Catlett, in particular, with her tendency towards slogan-like titles, produced a series of linocuts during these early years that aimed explicitly at celebrating the heroines of the African-American struggle, such as Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, as a means of

h. This strategy had been developed during the late 1930s in Mexico City, as the Taller artists began to associate with numer- ous Spanish and German exile groups and representatives, most notably the former Bauhaus director Hannes Meyer, who

became the Toiler's administrator in 1941. 12. Catlett and White had originally hoped to work as assistants to

Siqueiros on his mural Patricios y Patriadas, but funding for this project was withdrawn shortly after their arrival in Mexico City.

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196. Charles White, Hope for the Future , 1947, lithograph, 349 x 273 mm (Collection of Reba and Dave Williams).

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197. Elizabeth Catlett, In Harriet Tubman I Helped Hundreds to Freedom , 1946, linoleum cut, 254 x 211 mm (Hampton University Museum, Virginia, e Elizabeth Catlett/VAGA New York/DAGS London, 1999).

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198. Fernando Castro Pacheco, Carillo Puerto , 1945, linoleum cut, 290 x 210 mm (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Taller de Gráfica Popular Collection).

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199. Charles White, Our War , 1949, lithograph, 229 x 356 mm (Boston, Museum of the National Center for African American Artists Inc.).

highlighting the contribution and sacrifice of the Negro woman within society as a whole.13 Unlike White's lithographs, which tended towards depicting anonymous Negro figures in situations of personal strife, such as the pensive wife/mother of Awaiting His Return (1946) and Hope for the Future (fig. 196), Catlett,

embracing the more explicit narrative content typical of her Mexican colleagues, portrayed her figures as dynamic, animated characters undertaking direct action on behalf of their people. In Harriet Tubman I Helped Hundreds to Freedom (fig. 197), for example, the heroine is depicted towering in the foreground, point-

13. The 'slogans' that make up the titles of this series of prints com- bine to produce the following statement: 'I am the Negro Woman. I have always worked hard in America. ... In the fields ... in other folks' homes. ... I have given the world my songs. In Sojourner Truth I fought for the rights of women as well as Negroes. In Harriet Tubman I helped hundreds to freedom. In Phyllis Wheadey I proved intellectual equality in the midst of slavery. My role has been important in the struggle to organise the unorganised. I have studied in ever-increasing numbers. My

reward has been between me and the rest of the land. I have spe- cial reservations . . . special houses . . . and a special fear for my loved ones. My right is a future of equality with other Americans.' This entire series, and Cadett's role in the develop- ment of African- American art is discussed at length by Melanie Herzog in 'Elizabeth Catlett in Mexico: Identity and Cross-cul- tural Intersections in the Production of Artistic Meaning'. International Review of African-American Art, xi/3, 1994, pp. 18-25.

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200. John Wilson, Trabajador , 1951, lithograph, 471 x 318 mm (Collection of the artist).

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ing ahead to direct a receding parade of slaves to their liberty. Such imagery had often been employed by the Taller in its representation of national figures, such as Benito Juárez, Lázaro Cárdenas and Emiliano Zapata, and in the allegorical heroes of posters including Fernando Castro Pacheco's Carillo Puerto (fig. 198). Similarly, even in her more sedate images, such as that of the seated guitar player in I Have Made Music for the World (1946), Catlett's representations remain tinged with indictments of discrimination and racial violence, as the burning cross and image of a black youth being beaten by a Ku Klux Klansman in the background tell us the story behind the 'blues' being sung for our enter- tainment.

On his return to the United States in 1947 Charles White,14 inspired by his Mexican experiences, became a pivotal figure in the formation of a similar group in New York - the Workshop for Graphic Art. Although open to artists of all races, the New York enterprise was especially concerned with supporting the work of young African-American artists, such as Robert Blackburn, Jacob Lawrence and John Biggers, whom White had known from his days at the Hampton University in Virginia in the early 1940s. Adopting both the Talleras collective organizational structure and its ethos of producing socially useful art, White acknowledged the New York Workshop's debt to their Mexican colleagues by contributing two of the many lithographs he made at the Taller in 1946, Mexican Boy and Mexican Woman , to the first of a series of mass-pro- duced folios, entided Yes, the People , published in 1948. A second folio issued by the New York Workshop in

1949, Negro USA , heralded White's first significant attempt to harness the methods he had learnt in Mexico as a means of promoting African-American social and political concerns. With prints including Our War (fig. 199) and Jacob Lawrence's Underground Railroad: Fording A Stream , the folio sought to document the selfless heroism of African-Americans at key moments in the history and development of the United States. A fur- ther important element of the workshop, and one that harked back to the days of the Federal Art Project, was its recognition of the ongoing necessity for cooperation among African-American artists, a poignant reminder of the continued discrimination they faced even in the burgeoning art market of post-war New York.

While her former husband endeavoured to promote the methods and practices of the Taller de Gráfica Popular among printmakers in New York, the continuing pres- ence of Elizabeth Catlett in Mexico City was an impor- tant influence on the development of the printmaking careers of two further African-American visitors to

Mexico, John Wilson and Margaret Taylor Burroughs, who became guest members at the Taller during the 1950s. John Wilson, whose route to Mexico in 1950 was motivated by similar aspirations to those of White and Catlett, originally intended to use his John Hay Whitney Fellowship15 to study mural painting under José Clemente Orozco. For Wilson, whose interest in the work of Orozco had been encouraged by Fernand Léger (with whom he had studied in Paris during the late 1940s), the Mexican example provided a means with which he could reconcile his traditional artistic

training with his desire to produce positive images of African-Americans:

In art school I discovered José Clemente Orozco and other Mexican mural painters. I was strongly influ- enced by their philosophy of creating a public art that expressed communal realities. I was also steeped in the traditions of Western European art. However, all the great art and timeless images I saw and admired never included images of black people as universal metaphors for significant realities and truths. The work of the Mexicans seemed to offer a

form through which I could use my art skills to cre- ate convincing images of black people. Hopefully, others would identify with these images and sense a common universal humanity.16 On arriving in Mexico City from Paris in 1950, how-

ever, Wilson learned of Orozco's sudden death from a heart attack several months previously. His original scheme thwarted, he immediately enrolled in the class- es taught by Catlett at the La Esmeralda art school. Although Wilson continued to pursue his study of mural techniques at both La Esmeralda and the San Carlos Academy, he soon began producing lithographs at the Taller with both El juicio and Trabajador dating from 1951. Trabajador (fig. 200), in particular, provides an explicit example of Wilson's aspirations in going to Mexico: in this print the dignified representation of the black construction worker appears in an almost geo- metric composition, an obvious realization of Wilson's

14. White had separated from Elizabeth Catlett during their Mexican visit, and they were divorced in 1947. Catlett remained in Mexico, where she later married fellow Taller member Francisco Mora.

15. According to LeFalle Collins (p .01) Wilson s trip to Mexico was financed by a Rosenwald Fellowship. My own research into the

artists' papers held in the Smithsonian Institution's Archive of American Art confirms, however, that funding did, in fact, come from the Whitney Foundation.

16. Papers of John Wilson, Reel 4876, Archives 01 American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

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201. Margaret Taylor Burroughs, Mexican Boy, linoleum cut, 306 x 274 mm (Collection of the artist).

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202. rJizabeth L-atlett, ror Lolored Only, 1940, lithograph, 237 x 169 mm (Collection of Reba and Dave Williams. Elizabeth Catlett/VAGA New York/DACS London, 1999).

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aim to combine the social example of the Mexican School with the formal qualities of the abstraction he had studied in Paris under Léger. In 1952 John Wilson was joined at the Taller by

another African-American artist, Margaret Taylor Burroughs. An associate of both Catlett and White from their days at the Chicago Art Institute in the early 1940s, Burroughs was a fervent political campaigner, whose decision to take a sabbatical from her teaching post in Chicago was motivated as much by the repres- sion of the McCarthy period in the United States, as her desire to learn more about socially committed art in Mexico. Under the guidance of Catlett, Burroughs enrolled at La Esmeralda before being invited to join the Taller , where she began making lithographs and linocuts, such as Mexican Landscape (1952) and Mexican Boy (fig. 201). For Burroughs, the experience of life at the Taller acted not only as a creative stimulus, but also gave her renewed enthusiasm for the political struggle back home in the United States:

I learned a lot and met a number of artists there. . . .

The year there strengthened me in more ways than one - not only artistically, but morally and intellec- tually - so that when I came back to Chicago I was in a fighting mood, and I decided to fight the reac- tionaries who were trying to run me out of my job as a teacher in the Chicago Public Schools. So I came back determined to fight anything like that and to continue in the way that I was doing before I left.17 Despite her relatively brief tenure at the Taller ,

Burrough's Mexican experiences had a significant impact on her work with young African-American artists in the United States. Defying the constraints of McCarthyism, and resuming her activities on behalf of African-Americans, Burroughs was an influential fig- ure in the foundation of the National Conference of

Negro Artists (NC A) in 1959 which, like both the Taller and Charles White's New York Graphic Workshop, adopted the medium of the print portfolio to promote both its members and its social and political values. These folios , in tandem with the organization of an annual members' show at Atlanta University, aimed at overcoming the institutional barriers that continued to make it difficult for African-American artists to exhib- it their work.

Catlett, meanwhile, continued to produce images specifically concerned with the African-American condition from her new home in Mexico, including an unpublished series involving several other Taller mem-

bers (including John Wilson) on prominent figures in African-American history for Freedom magazine, in 1954. 18 Although she visited the United States rarely (indeed, after becoming a Mexican citizen in 1962, she was barred from entering the country of her birth because of her political affiliations), she remained com- mitted to the fight against discrimination, with images such as For Colored Only (fig. 202), Separation (1954) and Malcolm X Speaks for Us (1969), acting as both an indict- ment of segregation and exploitation, and as a demon- stration of the determination and dignity of the African-American race as they continued in their struggle for justice and equality. The forceful resonance of these and other works ensured that Catlett's endeav-

ours would not be confined to her Mexican audience, and she again became a powerful influence on a new generation of African-American artists, such as Samella Lewis, in the United States during the civil rights campaigns of the 1960s.

For those artists, such as White, Catlett, Wilson and Burroughs, who engaged directly with its activities, the appeal of the Taller de Gráfica Popular operated on all lev- els; they were respected for their technical and artistic ability, the way in which they had harnessed a popular aesthetic to elaborate their social and political pro- gramme, and their mutually cooperative way of work- ing. Furthermore, in the context of the ongoing struggle for equality and recognition by African- Americans in the United States, the Talleťs methods and ideology held a particular resonance in that they provided a model through which African-American artists could explore those issues pertaining to their racial identity and heritage, while actively participating in the fight against bigotry and oppression. Through the medium of the print and the ethos of collaboration, the Taller de Gráfica Popular also demonstrated the way in which African-American artists could circumvent the

inherent discrimination of the gallery system, which continued to restrict their opportunities for exhibition, and produce works that, in their accessibility, would also serve to transmit their socio-political message to the widest possible audience. The success of these artists in their execution of effective, tendentious and technically accomplished works, only partially demon- strated in the examples discussed here, acted not only as a testament to their own abilities, but to the ongoing spirit of fraternity between African-American artists and their Buenos Vecinos in Mexico.

17. Margaret Taylor Burroughs, interview with Anne Tyler, 5 December 1988, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

18. Catlett herself refused to complete the commission following a dispute with the editor of Freedom over several of the prints sub- mitted.

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