Francisco Toledo

(Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1940 – Oaxaca, 2019)

La Cenicienta (Cinderella)

1984

lithograph on paper

61 x 41 cm

Inv. no. CAB148

BBVA Collection Mexico



Francisco Toledo was not only a peerless Mexican cultural promoter, but also an artist with exceptional insight. Toledo did not see: he hallucinated. He had a connection with nature and with ancestral memory unmatched by any other artist. His visual values are grounded in meticulous manual technique, while the sources of his ornamentation must be traced back to the friezes of the Zapotec pyramids, the Mount Albán funerary urns, the masks of the archaeological site of Lambityeco and the Mixtecan vases and codices. Toledo’s imaginary was animated by his sexual drive, something clearly evinced by his self-portraits and by a playful bestiary made up of toads, chapulines (grasshoppers), iguanas, crabs and lizards.

Toledo’s art practice metabolises genres and elements from nature in an ongoing procreation that restores the cyclic movement of life. Human beings, plants and animals in joyful copulation turn the Universe into a huge body in heat.

Cinderella evinces the artist’s versatility in printing techniques (stone, wood, sugar mixed with Indian ink and soap) and his obsession with both ancient and recent myths. It also coveys his childlike taste for playing. Toledo worked very often for children, illustrating stories and designing toys, like jigsaws, Zapotean and Mixtecan alphabets, and many other artistic and functional objects.