Chapulines [Grasshoppers]

Primary Francisco Toledo (Mexico City, Mexico, 1940–Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico, 2019)

NationalityMexican, North America

Date1975

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsFramed: 40 1/8 × 52 in. (102 × 132.1 cm)
Sight: 39 7/16 × 51 3/8 in. (100.1 × 130.5 cm)

Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, Archer M. Huntington Museum Fund, P1975.23.5

Keywords

animal

Rights Statement

IN COPYRIGHT

Collection AreaLatin American Art

Object numberP1975.23.5

On View

Not on view

Label Text

Web Comments

Francisco Toledo studied art in both Mexico and Europe, becoming a major figure in Latin American art. His exquisite craftsmanship paralleled his imaginative subjects, often inspired by his childhood experiences in Veracruz and Oaxaca. Growing up in a family with Zapotec ancestry, he was encouraged to create art and explore the natural world around him, while his relatives taught him in the Zapotec language about the local myths, legends, and customs. Toledo enjoyed eating chapulines as Oaxacan have done since ancient times. But in addition to serving as crunchy snacks, grasshoppers can quickly reproduce and change into locusts when adverse conditions threaten their survival, eating all vegetation in their path. Here, Toledo focuses on that transformative moment when the insects quietly come together to breed, surrounded by the beautiful rich gray and earthy tones of the Oaxacan landscape. Their offspring may grow to be solitary grasshoppers or become gregarious yet destructive locusts.

Exhibitions

Latin American Artists in New York Since 1970

Plural