Graphic art has long been considered a side note in official art history, a technique considered inferior, anti-technological, almost anachronistic. The result of in-depth research, the exhibition From Posada to Isotype, from Kollwitz to Catlett: Exchanges of Political Print Culture. Germany - Mexico, 1900–1968, curated by Benjamin H. D. Buchloh and Michelle N. Harewood, reveals the way in which a popular and accessible language was a powerful political tool for a broad range of international art movements. Framed within this exhibition, the present publication is articulated around three settings enriched with new essays and historical texts from a diverse group of authors who explore the events, tensions and projects that took place and shaped the trajectories of their protagonists. It starts with two initial cases of particular relevance to print culture in the late nineteenth century, Mexican artist José Guadalupe Posada and German artist José Guadalupe Posada, and moves on to explore Taller de Gráfica Popular (The People’s Print Workshop) from Mexico, ending with the project Isotype (International System of Typographic Picture Education) by Otto Neurath and Marie Reidemeister-Neurath, from Austria, and German artist Gerd Arntz.
