Work Brings Us Together: Larrauri/Mexiac

Posted on 24 August, 2016

On April 20, 2016, at Galería Víctor Manuel Contreras in Universidad Autónoma del Estado de Morelos (UAEM), campus Cuernavaca, the exhibition Work Brings Us Together. One More Time, was opened. It brought together two sets of works from two essential creators in the history of art and culture in Mexico: Moments in the History of Mexico. Illustrations by Iker Larrauri, and Illustration in the work of Adolfo Mexiac.

 
 
In Sergio Raúl Arroyo’s opinion, “The images left brehind by Mexiac and Larrauri are a careful narrative of the multiple faces of a country, seen through the demands of militancy, and at the same time through academic patience […] It is not easy to choose which of these two lessons matters the most: living to educate, educating to live. A couple of biographies come together, stray apart and then come together once again. ‘Work brings us together’, they tell us. It may be the secret of a long friendship. We should listen to them”.
 
 
One of the key features of this exhibition is the inclusion of rarely seen illustrations by Larrauri, showcasing the accuracy with which archeological details are depicted by this Mexican architect-anthropologist-artist-museographer. Pedro Miguel writes about him: “With Iker I learned that the
dignification of objects gives their own dignity back to both men and their work, and that every artifact preserves a knowledge concerning its creators […]
Larrauri is both an artisan and an artist, but also a specialist and a technician, as well as a learned scholar who made himself by dint of facing up to and solving problems, driven by his desire to know about everything and everyone, and the breadth of his spirit which enables him to approach any issue without preconceived notions. No, Iker is not a Renaissance man, but a man of his own centuries: the 20th and 21st”.
 
 
Mexiac’s works included here, on the other hand, are examples of the militancy and passion of a creator of images engaged with the social sphere, enriched with the legacy of Taller de Gráfica Popular (Popular Graphic Arts Workshop). As Alberto Híjar points out: “Adolfo Mexiac condenses the dynamic tradition of the Mexican School of Painting. The School without classrooms has a constant space for intervention in popular struggles, and in the rural and urban environments where they develop. Mexiac learned to signify all this with the help of teachers such as José Chávez Morado, Alberto Beltrán, Leopoldo Méndez, Pablo O´Higgins; the sociologists Ricardo and Isabel Pozas; the writer Juan Rulfo; and through fraternal discussions with his comrades in life, men and women beyond eurocentric artistic reductions, because of their solidarity with liberation movements”.
 
 
The exhibition, presented by UAEM through its Secretaría de Comunicación Universitaria and its Dirección de Comunicación Intercultural, will be open until
May 13, 2016.