El Taller de Grafica Popular
El Taller de Gráfica Popular (The Workshop for Popular Graphics or TGP), was an art collective that strived to improve the living conditions of Mexico’s working class through art and activism from 1938 to 1960. An important chapter in the history of Mexico’s printmaking tradition, TGP used lithographs, linoleum cuts, water-based pigment on paper, woodcuts and other media to depict thought-provoking social and political issues with such exquisite craftsmanship that the total effect has an immediacy and power rarely achieved in any visual medium.
Founders
Leopoldo Méndez, along with other prominent Mexican artists Pablo O'Higgins, Alfredo Zalce, Luis Arenal, Ignacio Aguirre, Isidora Ocampo and others, founded Taller de Gráfica Popular. Its politics were solidly to the left but anti-Trotsky and allied with Silvestre Revueltas, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Lombardo Toledano and others. It was a collective work center producing paintings and engravings, creating realistic but simple designs with its more abundant engraving work. They considered artistic development inseparable from political development, mostly working with cultural and political institutions of similar views. It was most active during World War II, producing propaganda against Adolf Hitler and his allies along with that against capitalism and the U.S. Méndez was central to the Taller, taking part in all its activities, supervising its production and doing most of the relations work with other organizations, such as unions and art galleries.
Despite his importance, by 1959, political differences with the more ardent Communists of the Taller marginalized him and he formally resigned in 1961.