UC San Diego

In this dissertation, I trace the Taller de Gráfica Popular’s (TGP) influence on the Chicano and Black art movements of the 1960s and 70s. I argue that the influence of the TGP seen in the 1960s is not a simple reemergence of the TGP’s forms and content, but rather a radical transnational activation of the Old Left’s avant-garde works and politics to be galvanized by the New Left’s artists and activists. I demonstrate the radicality of the TGP images by tracing its impact on artists who used the message to challenge imperialist, capitalist, and racist structures, which resulted in attempts by dominant institutions to erase its message. It is within this censorship that the TGP images and subsequent Chicano and African American works operate outside the mainstream and instead move into the realm of the avant-garde. Subsequently, alternative publications and networks become sites of resistance for the politically vanguard works. My research methodology combines formal and social analysis with archival research of graphic works, alternative publications, personal correspondence, and written and oral interviews. Chapter one situates the project within the field of art history, particularly with scholars working with narratives of transnationalism, trans-America, and hemispheric studies, as well as the history of avant-garde printmaking and art networks within Mexican, Chicano, and African American art histories. Chapter two traces the TGP’s history in the U.S. and describes the challenges and successes of transnational leftist artists during the first half of the twentieth century. Chapter three analyzes the reemergence of TGP graphics in the Chicano Movement, as well as its subsequent influence on Chicano artists and activists. Chapter four revisits the contributions of African American artist Elizabeth Catlett to the TGP, follows the impact of Catlett’s call to African American artists to create a new transnational art movement, and analyzes the solidarity efforts between Chicano and Black artists and activists during the 1960s and 1970s. Chapter fives concludes by resituating the TGP and the work of Chicano and Black radical artists into the global avant-garde archive, while tracing contemporary artists who are still influenced by the TGP’s legacy.