Francisco Toledo created a number of prints in 1969 and1970 featuring images of Mexican vaqueros or cowboys. The practice of herding cattle on horseback was brought to Mexico by the Spanish in the 16th and 17th centuries and spread from Mexico to the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries. The almost mystical connection between cowboys and their horses appealed to Toledo’s interest in hybrid creatures and connections between the natural and supernatural worlds. This image is of a saddled, riderless horse at night,with the reins around the saddle horn, as it is being attacked by wasps. The horse's body is visually dissected by a tree on which the wasps' nest is attached to a branch.
This image was printed in Paris by the lithography firm Atelier Clot, Bramsen & George (now Brunholt), France's oldest lithographic workshop, and published by Baltimore's Roten Galleries, which also published prints and portfolios as Aquarius Press.
Francisco Toledo was born in 1940 in Juchitán, Mexico. He studied at the Benito Juarez Autonomous University in Oaxaca and the Taller Libre de Grabado in Mexico City before moving to Paris at age 17 and learning from writer Octavio Paz, painter Rufino Tamayo, and many others. Toledo also honed his printmaking skills in the studio of Stanley William Hayter. Toledo returned to Mexico in 1965 and became a part of “la Ruptura” (or the Breakaway Generation), a group of Mexican artists working against established nationalistic styles. Toledo settled in Oaxaca and became a key figure of Mexican art and cultural preservation in Oaxaca. He was regarded by many as Mexico’s greatest living artist until his passing in 2019.
Toledo is known for his works on paper, especially intaglio prints and paintings, but he created thousands of artworks including collages, tapestries, and ceramics. His work often features Zapotec imagery from his indigenous pre-Columbian heritage. His style is described as using folklore, Shamanism, and mysticism to blend animals and humans; Expressionistic; and environmental. Toledo was known as El Maestro, the master or teacher, who was devoted to bringing art to the masses. He was deeply invested in his community in Oaxaca and thus created the Oaxaca Museum of Contemporary Arts, the Graphic Arts Institute of Oaxaca, a library for the blind, a photographic arts center, a botanical garden, and more. He described these projects as his inspiration to continue producing and selling art. Toledo’s work is now included in the collections of major institutions in the United States, Mexico, and internationally, and is arguably one of the most significant Mexican artists of the past 50 years.
