DAVID BIRDWELL

At an age when many people spend their days looking for a shady bench on the Zocalo, Francisco Toledo has no time for such luxuries.

As it is, the days aren’t long enough for the Oaxaca state native.

Toledo, 67, is considered to be one of Mexico’s foremost artists. His graphics, paintings, sculptures, ceramics and textiles have earned him worldwide acclaim, including the Mexican National Prize (1998), the Prince Claus Award (2000) and the Right Livelihood Award (2005). His works have been exhibited in Tokyo and at least a dozen U.S. cities as well as across wide swaths of Latin America and Europe.
In Oaxaca, however, he is even more revered as a promoter and protector of the city’s cultural community. As the founder or a major contributor to at least a dozen projects over four decades, including such standouts as the Instituto de Artes Graficos de Oaxaca and the Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Oaxaca (MACO), Toledo has had a profound effect on the city’s cultural offerings.

And he’s far from finished.

El Museo Textil de Oaxaca, an institution dedicated to the world of textiles and kick-started by Toledo, one of three benefactors who donated a collection of 4,000 pieces, opened in April to great fanfare.
The artist also said he is working with an organization from Seattle, Wash., group that is organizing an October kite festival expected to draw visitors to Oaxaca.

“ There are going to be people from Guatemala because they have a tradition of kite-making,” Toledo said. “(The organizers) already came to Oaxaca … Some of the kites are huge, and they need a large space and went to CASA (the center for the arts) to check them out and also the paper. So they will use the paper from the factory in St. Augustin Etla."

Watching over so many projects is a full-time job, one that deprives Toledo of time with the skills that arguably have made him his country’s finest living graphics artist.

“ Periodically, I feel like going away to dedicate myself solely to my paintings,” he said on a March evening at a local restaurant. “But the places where I’d like to go are far away. I would rather use that money on my projects than on my personal goals. Also, if I go away, I would be thinking what’s going on in Oaxaca and I wouldn’t have peace of mind.”

Even in Oaxaca, where uneasy tensions still lie below the surface after deadly 2006 protests that eventually were put down by thousands of federal troops and state police, that peace of mind sometimes is elusive. Toledo said he worries about the city’s future, as well as his own.

“ The problem is continuing because we didn’t have any solutions,” he said of the seven-month protests, which began as a drive to give the state’s teachers pay raises and escalated when protesters began to demand the resignation of state Gov. Ulises Ruiz. “I also feel that the people of Oaxaca are a little depressed, because the problem was never resolved, even though we felt some of the demands were fair and just.

“ Problems were growing, and we couldn’t see them because we’re so busy. We couldn’t see the magnitude of the problems, and we didn’t get anything good.”

In the face of such uncertainty, will Toledo stay in Oaxaca?
“ It depends on the future months,” he said. “There might be more violence and more protests, and there might be more repression. If that happens, it might be time for me to leave. Right now, I haven’t changed my plans.”
If he goes, Toledo said, people shouldn’t worry about Oaxaca's cultural future.

“ All the institutions can still work without me,” he said. “If I’m here, I’ll still work with them. If I’m gone, they will continue to work.”

Toledo, a son of Zapotec parents (his father was a poet, his mother an artist), was born on July 17, 1940, in the southern Oaxaca city of Juchitan. The road to the budding artisan’s remarkable career began at age 17, when he entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Oaxaca. From there, he went on to Centro Superior de Artes Aplicadas del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes in Mexico City.

By age 20, he was living in Paris, where he expanded his horizons further under the tutelage of the late British surrealist painter and printmaker Stanley William Hayter. Toledo returned to Mexico five years later and has lived in Oaxaca ever since.

His instincts for philanthrophy quickly kicked in.
“ I don’t like that word,” said Toledo, noted for his modesty and desire to avoid the spotlight. “I don’t even remember when I started contributing. I started by donating books to (the Escuela de Bellas Artes). I got my start in that school, so I felt like I should return something. I knew the library had needs.
“ I like to give spontaneously, not (as a way of) going to heaven.”

Toledo’s generosity hasn’t been confined to his home city. He routinely donates books to outlying villages, and even prisons. Yet, he acknowledged that his mission – persuading children to read early and often – usually falls short.
“ I have been donating books, but I don’t have the resources to organize the authorities of these towns,” he said. “… I would love to train people to teach these kids to wake up to life and have reading workshops. But it’s only a dream because I can ’t do it alone.”