Lourdes Grobet, Lucha Libre Legends photographer, dies at 81 – ARTnews.com

Lourdes Grobbet, the multi-faceted Mexican artist who immortalized the lucha libre legends with her camera lens, has died at the age of 81.

Over four decades, she has conducted experiments in video, performance, and photography that explored the social reality of the Mexican working class in the twentieth century. Her most praised pictures show the heroes and villains of the incredible sport of lucha libre in humble places: by the fireplace, retouched makeup, or nursing babies.

Over the weekend, fellow artists and fans from Mexico and beyond praised Grobet’s intriguing photography. Left behind an extraordinary body of work on social class and gender in her country, Cuban-American artist Coco Fusco wrote on Twitter. “Her pictures of luchadores are absolutely unforgettable. Farewell and thank you, dear Lourdes.”

Lourdes Grobet was born in 1940 in Mexico City to a Swiss-Mexican family. She studied plastic arts at the University of Iberoámericana under members of the avant-garde in Mexico, including Mathias Goeritz, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, and Katy Horna.

“The teachers who influenced me the most early on were Mathias and Gilberto and El Santo – the man with the silver mask,” Grubbt later said, one of the most famous protestors. As a student, Grobbet sought to expand her earlier painting practice, and with the encouragement of her teachers, she left Mexico in 1968 to continue her education in France.

She found that the immediate and communicative aspects of photography suited her endeavours. “I looked around, and after asking myself the inevitable questions about what art is, it became clear to me that it was a language, a way of saying things, and so I had to find the best way to say it,” she told Angélica. Abelleyra in 2005.

Grupp returned to Mexico City in the 1970s and found a rising fascist movement based on anti-communist sentiment and so-called traditional Christian values. Her first major outing was in 1970’s Galería Misrachi, where she presented the installation Serendípiti (serendipity), “a maze of raised floors, lights, and mirrors,” according to the Hammer Museum, which audiences have been invited to explore. Between 1973 and 1975, she performed two photo shows at Casa del Lago: no mesa (to the table), a composite image of household appliances, and Hora y Media (an hour and a half), she was photographed walking across a wooden frame and tore the aluminum foil that was covering it.

She left Mexico again in 1977 to study photography at Cardiff School of Art and Design in Wales. On her return to Mexico City in the late 1970s, she joined Proceso Pentágono, an artist group that organized outspoken public interventions and advocated experimentation in response to social oppression, and became involved with Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía, a newly established cultural institution dedicated to promoting. and the invention of photography in Mexico.

Grobet began dating lucha libre in the ’80s, to demystify sports stars without undermining the eccentricities that set them apart. Male and female wrestlers – which is what she called La Double Lucha, Or the two-way conflict – filmed in intimate settings and even arranged as if it were an ordinary family photo, but still disguised in fabulous costumes.

Her publications include the 2005 “Lucha Libre: Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling” and her photos can be found in the collections of Fundación Cultural Televisa and Centro de la Imagen in Mexico City. Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin; and the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris, among other places.



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