The brightest and happiest life - scenes from Mexican calendar art

 

During the late 1920s and '30s, Mexico's rural population began to shift toward the urban, and the cities of Guadalajara, Monterrey, and Mexico City grew dramatically. At the same time, the level of education increased along with an improved standard of living. A new consumer class grew up and the colorful advertisements in sponsored calendars enticed people to purchase domestically produced goods, as well as imported products from the United States. Calendar advertising encouraged poor and middle-class Mexicans to believe that they too could obtain a higher standard of living and eventually afford many of the luxuries of the upper classes.

There were two types of calendars, the "exclusive" calendar and the "line" calendar. The largest, most profitable companies produced the exclusive calendars, commissioning prominent artists to create artwork for the companies' annual calendars, paintings that would feature the company's products - cigarettes, liquor, soda, etc. Understandably, no other company would be allowed to use those same images. These calendars were then sent to the company's distributors to be given as gifts to their best customers.

Line calendars were far more common. The calendar companies employed salesmen, paid on commission, who traveled the countryside visiting small businesses as well as vendor stalls at the local mercado. The salesmen brought with them a large selection of images from which customers could choose; the line calendars weren't brand specific, so didn't have a company's products painted into the artwork. Once the customer chose an image, the calendar would be sent to be printed with the customer's business name, address, and phone number. These custom printed calendars were then delivered to the business person in early December.

The business owners and mercado vendors would then give out these calendars to customers as a way to thank them for their business, as well as for promotional purposes; they were a year-long advertisement hanging right in the customer's home. The families' favorite calendar would often be displayed in the living room, with others in the kitchen and other parts of the house. Often the families enjoyed the images so much that they simply cut off the date pad and saved the calendar art, to be hung permanently in the family home.

Many artists were employed creating the paintings reproduced in these calendars, some of the best-known being Antonio Gomez, Armando Drechsler, Jaime Sadurni, Eduardo Cataño, José Bribiesca Ruvalcaba, and Jesús Helguera. (Helguera is, by far, the most represented artist in this collection of images.) The subject matter reflected the Mexican government's push toward nationalism during that period, encouraging an artistic celebration of the country's own rich history and culture, freed from European and American influences. Aztec mythology, life in the village or on the rancho, women in regional costume, scenes of religious devotion were the sort of subjects featured in these brightly colorful images.

In spite of this commercial celebration of mejicanismo - happening at the same time as the post-Mexican Revolution artistic flowering that witnessed the work of the great painter/muralists, the surrealists, Frida Kahlo, and others - the calendar artwork also served to reinforce the racism and colorism inherent in the contemporary Mexican culture. Though usually dressed in traditional costume, most of the figures who people these scenes display conspicuously European features. This is especially evident in those that are female, who are usually portrayed as light-complected, fully made-up, and with "pin-up girl" physiques. While placed in settings and situations that mirror the indigenismo of the aforementioned fine artists, they instead have had almost all physical traces of ethnicity removed; the indio is celebrated in this work but rarely actually seen.

The story of painted calendar art all but ended with the boom in popularity of color photography in the late 1950's. The photographic calendars could be produced much more quickly and much less expensively. But the printing house Calendarios Landin, which owns the reproduction rights to Jesús Helgueras' classic paintings, operates a modern plant in Guanajuato, one of a handful of printers still producing classic-style calendars for distribution in Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

The actor Pedro Armendáriz.

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Full disclosure: When I lived in LA - 1986-1993 - I was a complete Hispanic/Latino wannabe. Nearly all my friends were Mexican-American, Mexican, or Central American. And they warmly included me in their friend and family circles, folded me in, made me feel a part of it all. Invited me to dinners, parties, clubs, family gatherings, weddings. They probably thought I was ridiculous - because I was - but I think they somehow appreciated this big güero's fascination with their lives and culture - both contemporary and traditional - and were always completely welcoming, encouraging, and incredibly kind. All this to say that, flaunting my fraudulent mejicanismo, I had - and actually wore - two t-shirts emblazoned with these last two Helguera paintings.