Francisco Toledo

(Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1940 – Oaxaca, 2019)

Author's artworks

20th-21st Century Mexican

Born in Juchitán, where he spent his early life, Toledo would later reside in Mexico City, Paris, New York and in his much-loved Oaxaca. Toledo began his art training in the 1950s in the printing studio of Arturo García Bustos (1926-2017) and in the Free Engraving Workshop at the Design and Handicrafts School at the National Institute of Fine Arts. He had his first solo exhibitions in 1959 at Galería Antonio Souza, in Mexico City, and at the Fort Worth Center, Texas.

His trips throughout Mexico and abroad encouraged his forays into printing, drawing, sculpting and ceramics, among other activities. He devoted his efforts and financial resources to projects engaging civil society and for the benefit of artists and communities, namely: the establishment of cultural spaces, the publication of books and journals accessible to all economies, civil associations to defend the environment, or movements in favour of the preservation of indigenous traditions and to safeguard the heritage of his native Oaxaca.

In 1993, the artist won First Prize at the Triennale Kleinplastik Fellbach, Germany, an event focused on small-format sculpture. In 1998 he was distinguished with the National Science and Arts Award. In 2000, Toledo presented his work with great success in a survey show organized jointly by Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, and Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, which helped to popularise the artist’s work. One of his final exhibitions, Duelo (Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City, 2015), was a poignant tribute to the 43 missing students of Ayotzinapa in a body of work of funereal ceramic sculptures that combines the fantasy zoology of his home state with a denunciation of the atrocities of power.

His unflagging activity as a cultural promoter led to the opening of Oaxaca’s Contemporary Art Museum; the Manuel Álvarez Bravo Photography Centre; the Jorge Luis Borges library for the visually impaired; the El Pochote Cine Club; and CaSa (San Agustín Arts Centre), which since 2006 has organised in Etla vocational training workshops in indigenous languages imparted by artists and artisans, with paper, photography, textiles, wood, ironwork, stage design, music and literature.

In 2015 Toledo donated to the National Institute of Fine Arts his invaluable collection of prints, as well as the premises for the Oaxaca Institute of Graphic Arts and his library of over 100,000 books. This artist of prodigious knowledge and a cultural promoter like no other Mexico has ever seen, passed away in 2019.