They show the relationship between Topor, Eko and Vlady

The exhibition ToporVladyEko: Panic, rebellion and desire in his ink, organized by the Vlady Center (CV), aims to review the connection of the work of the Mexican engraver, illustrator and cartoonist Héctor Estanislao de la Garza Batorski, better known as Eko, with the Mexican Russian Vladimir Kibalchich Rusakov Vlady (1920-2005) and the French engraver and illustrator Roland Topor.

Starting with this exhibition, the campus belonging to the Autonomous University of Mexico City will begin a series of individual presentations by several of Vlady’s disciples, many of whom were included in The echoes of Vladycollective exhibition mounted in the CV in 2023.

One of them was Eko (1958), although he prefers to use the term from Vlady’s vision schoolinstead of disciple. For Eko, the painter was owner of an impeccable line what he dedicated himself to blurring in his works. Theirs was a very special quest. He literally transmitted the revolutionary spirit that, in addition, in the 60s and 70s constituted a brutal revolution in literature, cinema and, of course, in graphics..

Eko met Vlady as a child when he accompanied his father to meals at the Swiss Pastry Shop, where a group of exiles and foreigners gathered, including the painter. Vlady realized that his drawings caught the attention of the little boy, who was about 11 years old. Do you like to draw? Show me your drawingsthe artist told him.

“I, very eagerly, made some drawings copying Donald Duck. I showed them to Vlady, who told me they were shit. I wasn’t offended, on the contrary, I paid a lot of attention to it. He advised me to copy a teacher, one I truly admired. So I came across Albrecht Dürer and his series on the Apocalypse; That’s what I copied.

I learned to draw while following the conversation with Vlady, which continued for many years. He was my teacher, then my companion, then my confidant. We spent many hours painting, arguing and fighting with Rembrandt’s painting techniques, until the last years of his life.

There came a time when Vlady said to the boy: You have to do engraving. You are very good at chiaroscuro, lines. The painter gave him a plate that Eko worked on and Vlady himself printed, becoming his first printer.

Transgression of eroticism

For many years Eko had the erotic strip Denise in the newspaper One more one, unique of its kind in the history of Mexican journalism: “What Vlady taught me the most was the value of the transgression of eroticism. It is not genital eroticism, but rather this power relationship that sex represents over two or more bodies. It’s not eroticism, it’s power. That took me out of this conservative vision of what sex is, which is rather the scene of power. The bodies are a stage set, it is more Shakespearean.

There I met Roland Topor (1938-1997), who used magazines, posters and newspapers as a means of expression. They are your platform to do work. I also identified a lot with him when he made my very protesting posters for revolutionary movements in Europe at that time. I found this bitter irony from Topor, plus Vlady’s transgressive violence with bodies, although his work is very sensual.

It was because of the way of working in the printed media that Fernando Gálvez de Aguinaga, director of the CV, found the bonding between the Parisian Topor and the Monterrey Eko. It turns out that when Topor delivered his drawings to the newspapers and magazines he worked for, they were stolen. He then went to the editor Bramsen in order to have a multiple original, deliver it, keep the rest of the edition and not lose the original imagesays Gálvez de Aguinaga.

The 36 works by Topor, present in the exhibition, come from the Institute of Graphic Arts of Oaxaca (IAGO), founded by Francisco Toledo. Also included is the animated science fiction film The wild planetwhich featured the participation of Topor and won the special jury prize at the Cannes International Festival in 1973. The director of the CV remembers that Toledo was the first Mexican artist to work at the Clot, Bramsen & Georges Litographies Atelier, in Paris , where he met Topor personally. The engraving collection that Toledo formed, and which is located at the IAGO, adds the specialist, became a source of possibilities for the country’s curators because whenever the project is well justified, those responsible for the institute are willing to provide work.

Eko points out that Vlady and Topor are two teachers who They literally twist me and mess with my head. My work is ultimately a distillation of this pair of monsters..

The exhibition ToporVladyEko: Panic, rebellion and desire in his ink, curated by Gálvez de Aguinaga, Silvia Vázquez Solsona and Tonatiuh Gallardo, It is exhibited until February 28 at the Vlady Center (Goya 63, Insurgentes Mixcoac neighborhood).