The International Posters Exhibition in Mexico City, 1934 and the Development of a “National Style”

Abstract

This article focuses on the 1934 International Poster Exhibition that took place in Mexico City and other cities in the country. From the perspective of entangled history, it is argued that this exhibition gave an account of Mexico’s integration in graphic arts for didactic and propaganda purposes, while leading to the mainstreaming of new styles, techniques, and contents in Mexican posters that would eventually have repercussions in artistical collectives such as the Liga de Escritores
y Artistas Revolucionarios and then the Taller de Gráfica Popular. Paying attention to iconographic, stylistic, and content transmissions of Soviet and Italian posters to Mexican iconography, it shows how the foreign avant-gardes were incorporated in the Mexican visual culture, in the process of defining a “national” style