Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Mexican Graphic Art and Visual Culture in the early 20th Century (Routledge Research in Art and Politics)

This book challenges the national myth that Mexican art between the Mexican Revolution and World War II was inevitably and thoroughly populist and nationalist and argues instead that there was no such all-encompassing spirit, and even art intended for broad populations was not always democratic. The author explores the painstaking efforts of artists and arts administrators to stake their claims to public art and link that cultural production to some of the most extreme political goals and allegiances of the early 20th Century.The chapters follow influential cultural producers, Vasconcelos, Dr. Atl, and the members of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, whose involvement in thinking about the revolution and the role of art in it began with leadership roles in the early 1920s.In the subsequent decades, these leaders whose work might have seemed to share common values early on pursued sharply divergent paths as they considered global fascist, antifascist, and antisemitic movements.The polarize