The Apocalypse

Jaime Alfredo Mereles joined the printmaking collective the Taller de Gráfica Popular in Mexico City (founded 1937) in the early 1980s, and in 2010, he was appointed Director. Although this print predates his involvement with the Workshop, it very much continues the subject of prints made by artists who worked there are were largely engaged in social and political issues. Here, three of the four horsemen of the apocalypse appear in the upper section of the print. One holds bags of money inscribed with the US dollar sign, another other raises a symbol of the atom referring to the atomic bomb, while the third points beyond the composition to the future. In the lower section, skeleton children play with a 501 locomotive train (a famous class of American locomotive). The image broadly addresses the impending doom facing the world. Skeleton characters echo the Mexican tradition of ‘calaveras’ made popular by Manuel Manilla and José Guadalupe Posada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that continue as a visual reference for many Mexican artists to this day.