The mountainous southern Mexico state of Oaxaca was long renowned as a center for folk art. It was home to the great potters Doña Rosa, Teodoro Blanco and Josefina Aguilar, the woodcarver Manuel Jimenez, and the rug weavers of Teotitlan del Valle. In the 1980’s and 90’s Oaxaca emerged as a leading center for fine art in Mexico as well. Several of the great Mexican painters came from Oaxaca - Rufino Tamayo, Rodolfo Neto, Rodolfo Morales and Francisco Toledo.
But it was the vitality of the next generation of Oaxacan artists who they influenced that led critics to identify a distinct Oaxaca School of Mexican art. Oaxacan art draws its strength from native Indian culture, myths and legends. It is suffused with "magic realism" a folk surrealism in which people fly and mysterious juxtapositions are the norm. As poet Alberto Blanco has written, the artists of Oaxaca "all tend to depict one theme: the appearance in our history of another time and place. A space within another space. A time within another time."
Indigo Arts has shown the work of these artists, and in particular their grabados or prints, for nearly four decades. These artists include Juan Alcazar, Modesto Bernardo, Enrique Flores, Abelardo Lopez, Eddie Martinez, Leovigildo Martinez, Felipe Morales, Fernando Olivera, Cecilio Sanchez, Filemon Santiago, and the (Japanese born) Shinzaburo Takeda.
