Queen Sofia examines the evolution of graphic art in "From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett"

Under the title From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett, the Museum presents its first exhibition of 2022, which examines the evolution of graphic art and its role as a tool for social vindication during the first half of the twentieth century. in Germany and Mexico.

The exhibition focuses its research on the development and exchange between different presumably obsolete and anti-technological graphic media, such as wood engraving, linoleum and lithography in the first half of the twentieth century, and their functions and forms of distribution in contexts. very different geopolitical and social issues. The show will allow us to review and rethink numerous key instances in these decades, when seemingly traditional print media served as cultural practices of progressive policies and emancipatory resistance.

Curated by Benjamin HD Buchloh and Michelle Harewood, From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett addresses the work of two of the great figures in engraving, José Guadalupe Posada and Käthe Kollwitz as well as the work done in this field by artists from the German expressionism and the Mexican Popular Graphic Workshop or the Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) project, undertaken by the Austrians Otto Neurath, Marie Reidemeister-Neurath and the German Gerd Arntz.

The cases of the Mexican José Guadalupe Posada and the German Käthe Kollwitz will serve as the starting point for this exhibition, the two great figures of the late nineteenth century in this discipline, and the subsequent influence of political graphic artists from different fields. geographical.

From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett, which can be visited from March 23 to August 29, brings together more than 450 works made with different techniques (woodcut, drypoint, linoleum, lithography, among others), many from major private collections and institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the MoMA in New York; The Art Institute, Chicago; the Library of Congress of the United States, in Washington; the Pompidou Center in Paris; or the Kunstmuseum Den Haag in The Hague.