The new exhibit at Housatonic Museum of Art in Bridgeport, “Body & Soul,” consists of 50 objects donated to the museum by the Ben Ortiz and Victor P. Torchia, Jr. Collection. The artworks focus on themes of both love and violence, sometimes literal violence, sometimes oppression of one group of people by another.
The heart of the exhibit are 10 lithographs made by printmakers in Mexico in 1946, all of them glorifying the blue-collar man and native populations, members of the working poor who persist in their rituals and labors, while laboring for subsistence wages for others.
Francisco Mora’s “Silver Mine Worker” shows a shirtless man in sandals, stooping to walk through a small tunnel, lamp in hand. Raúl Anguiano’s “Lime Kilns” depicts two men pushing a heavy wheelbarrow as plumes of smoke rise from indentations in the ground. Alberto Beltrán’s “Grinding Sugar Cane” places humans at an equal status as a mule, as they both work a grinding machine.
All of the artists were members of the Taller de Gráfica Popular, a printmaking collective concerned with the needs of the poor.
Another artwork in the show is by a faraway soul mate of the Mexican artists. “Coal Miner,” a 1900 litho by German Max Lieberman, shows a working man, stooped, walking home. Lieberman was a Jew who saw his career end in 1933 when the Nazis came to power. He died two years later. Another artist from an oppressed nation, Czech expatriate Eva Fuka, is showcased in a subtly eerie photograph of a boy standing next to a closed carousel.
Other artists whose work can be seen in the show include Lynd Ward, Carlos Irizarry, Leonard Baskin, Iwao Akiyama, Matthew Brady and Francisco Goya.
HOUSATONIC MUSEUM OF ART is at Housatonic Community College, 900 Lafayette Blvd. in Bridgeport. “Body & Soul” will be on exhibit until Oct. 23. housatonicmuseum.org.
