Tag Archives: Gabo Mendoza

Oaxaca Artist Gabo Mendoza Takes Us Back to Childhood

Posted on Thursday, January 19, 2023 | Comments Off

During the week that the Esprit Travel + Tours group was with us in Oaxaca, we made a visit to Gabo (Gabriel) Mendoza whose studio is on Xicotencatl near Hidalgo. Originally from Mexico City, Gabo did volunteer work there for many years with street children. He incorporates their childlike curiosity, resilience, and wonderment in his work. He also captures their pain as children of women who work the street. We spent time with Gabo in his studio before going on an all-afternoon, four-stop Oaxaca Eats tasting tour with Lorena.

Creativity has no boundaries for Gabo. He uses paint, amate paper, found objects, sand, glue, and weaving in his art. He explores the abstract and the literal. He takes us on a journey of self-reflection and explores what it means to give up pretenses and model behavior. The joyful, playful and inquisitive nature of the child is fully realized in his paintings that incorporate bright colors and a whimsical drawing style.

Here is a photo essay of our time with Gabo Mendoza in his studio. On Friday, January 20, he is making a presentation at the Oaxaca Lending Library at 4:30 p.m. If you are in town, see if you can snag a ticket!

Oaxaca has a deep and rich art, design, photography and graphic art printmaking tradition. Galleries are all over the city. Before we went to Gabo, we visited Gabriela Morac from Tlacochahuaya who is represented in Santa Fe, NM, and Alan Altamirano, who has exhibited worldwide, at his La Chicharra printmaking studio. Having an art walking tour rounded out our experience to know and appreciate the culture here.

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Posted in Oaxaca Mexico art and culture

Tagged art, Gabo Mendoza, Mexico, Oaxaca, painting

Artist Gabo Mendoza Show Opens, Thursday, June 16 at Galeria Arte de Oaxaca

Posted on Saturday, June 11, 2016 | Comments Off

Your invitation to join Gabo Thursday, June 16, 7 p.m.

Your invitation to join Gabo this Thursday, June 16, 7 p.m.

I’ve written about Gabriel “Gabo” Mendoza before. His work might seem whimsical at first look. But it is filled with meaning, emotion, character and ripe for interpretation.

Woven handmade paper painted with a child’s scream or song. You decide.

Gabo’s subjects are street people, many representing the underbelly of Mexico: poverty, disenfranchisement, sex workers who are mothers, children who are homeless, uneducated and uncared for.

Young boys on the street with artist Gabo Mendoza

Young boys (or are they men?) on the street with artist Gabo Mendoza

Dreaming of bicycles and a way to get away

Gabo plays with language in his paintings. Words and parts of words appear and trail off the paper or canvas, giving a sense of incompleteness, impermanence. Bici is Spanish for bicycle. Where’s the B in the painting above? Broken off or away or a shadow or dream?

The family comes together as a unit of friends, substitute for those who are absent

Portrait of Gabo Mendoza in his Xicotencatl workshop taller

Doesn’t every child want a puppy to play with? or maybe it’s a goat!

And they went into the ark, two by two, one male, one female …

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Posted in Cultural Commentary, Oaxaca Mexico art and culture

Tagged art, artist, Gabo Mendoza, Gabriel Mendoza, Mexico, Oaxaca, painting

Oaxaca Artist Gabriel Mendoza Lives Here

Posted on Wednesday, February 24, 2016 | Comments Off

Oaxaca artist Gabriel Mendoza Rodriguez lives obscurely and paints large. His works are filled with color, humor, sadness, political and social commentary. They are playful and grotesque, childlike and sophisticated, simple and complex.

Two large paintings in Gabo’s studio

Look into Gabo’s eyes and you know that he feels what he paints — street children, prostitutes, farm animals. These are interpretations of life as he knew it growing up in Mexico City and what he sees here in Oaxaca.

Gabriel “Gabo” Mendoza Rodriguez in front of colonial adobe wall

I look at Gabo’s work and think back to Mexico’s political satirical movement started by Jose Guadalupe Posada. Diego Rivera revered Posada. So did his contemporaries David Alfaro Siquieros and Jose Clemente Orozco. Many of their paintings seem like a cartoon. The satirical cartoon is a hallmark of Mexican art and I see it, especially, in Gabriel Mendoza‘s work.

Expansive courtyard where Gabo works

Gabo lives and works within the second courtyard of a vintage colonial adobe home in the historic center of Oaxaca. The front door is now metal with only the street number visible. Inside, the first courtyard is filled with old restaurant equipment and surrounded by vacant rooms.

Three calaveras — skeletons — a common theme, a different approach

Walk further back and you enter an expansive brick patio where Gabo works. Here are easels, a printing press, a table saw for building frames for paintings and doors, murals and drawings on the crumbling stucco walls. Beyond are abandoned rooms where only debris and termite eaten timbers lay waiting for rehabilitation or burial. Work is in progress.

Decades of disuse in a building with great bones

This is studio space that is used by several artists and Gabo hopes that more will come here to create and collaborate.

Please feel free to go and knock on the door. This is a part of Oaxaca worth exploring and a talented young man you will want to meet. With thanks to Dumpster Diver Diva Ellen Benson for the introductions!

Layers of acrylic paint on woven paper, texture and color

Gabriel “Gabo” Mendoza Rodriguez, Xicotencatl #303 (between Guerrero and Colon). Knock loudly and ring the bell several times! You say the street: She-Koh-Ten-Caht-L