La Buena Impression celebrates five years of expanding graphic arts in Oaxaca

La Buena Impression, a lithography workshop based in Oaxaca, celebrates its first five years of life with the exhibition On stone and paper: Five years of creation The Good Impression, in Sin Galería, a space in the Cuauhtémoc neighborhood, first emerged digitally, and for a year and a half with a physical headquarters.

It is the workshop’s first exhibition and it does so with 19 works of its production. The folder is also displayed Volumetric intuitions, printed by Pilar Bordes and donated by its editor León Bendesky (a collaborator of this newspaper), because the funds collected from the sale of the works will be used to teach courses in communities in the state.

Likewise, two pieces printed by Saúl Villa, who is part of the group of friends of La Buena Impression, are on display. Last Friday, a selection of works was taken to the French city of L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, in the context of a Mexican poetry festival.

The Good Impression arose from the donation of a 1909 Voirin electric lithography press by French artists and printers Julie Gerbaud and Patrick Devreux. The artist Fernando Aceves Humana, co-founder of La Buena Impression, points out that the couple launched a call and of the 2 thousand responses received, they chose the Oaxacan workshop so that the press will work for 100 more years in educational programs and professional editions.

Initially, the press was intended for Cambodia; However, “as the conditions were not met, this project was put together with Daniel Barraza, Francisco Castro Leñero, Dr. Lakra, María Miranda and Guillermo Ramírez Orduña, who trained there.”

Aceves Humana explains how the workshop works: “We go to communities, especially Yanhuitlán, in the Mixteca Alta, where we have worked a lot, we give a course, we choose the best students who then train with us, with the idea of ​​providing a job feasible as a livelihood.

It is about expanding graphics in rural and urban communities, and supporting them to create their own workshops.

One of its purposes is to revive the technique of lithography, which tends to disappear. In that task we are not the firstpoints out Aceves Humana, who remembers the work of Per Anderson and Rafael Ruiz, in Xalapa, with La Ceiba Gráfica. Learning lithography is a life experience and a craft that can reach extraordinary levels of quality. Lithography is a medium that changed the publishing world, and for a century it revolutionized advertising and all human occupations, including military ones..

María Miranda, art historian and director of La Buena Impression, arrived in 2020, when the workshop had the BBVA scholarship. Subsequently, there was a co-investment from Fonca, through which we had access to the most remote regions, where quality education is difficult to reach, and artistic education, even more so..

For the survival of the technique

The exhibition On stone and paper It includes the work of students such as Arisa González, from Yanhuitlán, and José de Jesús Luna, from the coastal community of Escobilla.

Some graduates of the workshop are currently studying at the La Esmeralda National School of Painting, Sculpture and Engraving. The other exhibitors are: Dr. Lakra, María Rosa Astorga, Aceves Humana, Daniel Barraza, Guillermo Ramírez Orduña, Taka Fernández, José Ángel Santiago, Julie Gerbaud, Patrick Devreux, Iván Bautista, Edith Chávez, Bernardo Porraz, Sebastian Fund, Karel Maldonado, Alejandro Aguilar and Saúl Villa.

A native of the capital of Oaxaca, Ramírez Orduña trained with Daniel Barraza, chief printer of La Buena Impression, whom he considers one of the best living lithographers in the country. Note: We are dedicated above all to training young printers and young lithographers so that they become more involved in this beautiful graphic technique and that it lasts over time..

Today, La Buena Impression works on several projects; Its members intend to set up a lithography workshop in the community of Yanhuitlán, where they have been creating for four years, so that it remains in the Rastros y Rostros community museum. With the funds raised from the sale of the work in the exhibition, it is intended to continue with the workshops in Escobilla, the olive ridley turtle sanctuary, and thus support the community in disseminating the activities of this habitat.

Another project is a Franco-Mexican collaboration; It consists of organizing a six-month seminar in Cambodia, with teachers and former teachers from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and with artists who have worked with the workshop. For 12 years we have had a press that is still the only one in the country. We are going to implement the same social service system that we use when we teach in Oaxaca. That is, in return for the free courses, the students become community teachers with the obligation to disseminate what they have learned with mobile presses.explains Aceves Humana. The seminar is scheduled to begin in February, with one-month courses. This is how the common dream from The Good Impression.

On Rock and paper: Five years of creation The Good Impression It will remain until October 31 at Sin Galería (Río Nazas 67, Cuauhtémoc neighborhood). To visit it, make an appointment by calling 55-3232-0277 or on Instagram.