Francisco Toledo
Zapotec artist of animals, myth and Oaxaca, who spent his life defending the place he came from.
Francisco Toledo was born in Juchitan in Oaxaca in 1940, of Zapotec descent, studied briefly in Mexico City and then spent years in Paris, where Tamayo encouraged him. The work is populated by animals — iguanas, crickets, rabbits, frogs, monkeys — drawn from Zapotec myth and folk story and rendered in gritty, earth-toned mixed media that frequently incorporates sand, insects and organic matter. He returned to Oaxaca and became its most determined public defender, funding libraries, a graphic arts institute and a photography centre, and campaigning against development and against genetically modified maize. He died in 2019.
The leading Mexican artist of his generation after Tamayo, with prices set in Mexico City and New York. Works on paper — gouache, watercolour, mixed media, frequently on handmade or amate paper — are the bulk of the market and are physically delicate, with organic inclusions that can degrade and papers that are light-sensitive. Toledo was also a very serious printmaker in etching and aquatint, and produced ceramics, textiles and kites. He is significantly forged, and provenance to a documented gallery is important.
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