During 1918, when the Constitutional Government of Mexico was presided over by Don Venustiano Carranza, there was residing in Paris as the special envoy of the President, Lic. Isidoro Fabela, and under Sr. Fabela’s generous protection Cabral was appointed an Attaché in the Mexican Legation, his duties being the pleasant task of illustrating a book of narratives which Señor Fabela was intending to publish. Shortly afterwards, he accompanied Señor Fabela on his official missions to Madrid and Buenos Ayres and in the Argentine capital they stayed fifteen months. There, in the interest of a Mexican national propaganda, Cabral contributed his cartoons to the principal newspapers and reviews, achieving a very considerable reputation in the Argentine. In the beginning of 1919, after an exile of seven years, Cabral returned to his native land and his work immediately began to appear in the weekly “Revista de Revistas” and in the influential daily newspaper “Excelsior.” Since that time his career has been one of unbroken success and of extraordinary popularity.
Cabral’s amazing drawings are worthy of taking rank with those of the most distinguished foreign cartoonists. He can, with equal facility, produce the most humorous of cartoons or the most satirical of caricatures. In his cartoons of representative people, he seems to extract by critical penetration—sympathetically—the quintessential expression of his subject. He is always an artist, a consummate designer and a psychological observer who analytically peers into the minds of men and lays bare their personalities. His art is versatile. In line, he excels as no other Mexican artist; but he is also a master of chiaroscuro, and as an illustrator his understanding of the massing of color is extraordinary.
During the past three or four years, Cabral must have produced several thousand cartoons and caricatures. His cartoons of representative people in Mexico have been drawn mostly from life, each sketched rapidly and surely in a little over half an hour. His political, social and topical cartoons form a kaleidoscopic history of contemporary Mexico. A great political question, such as the official American recognition of President Obregon’s Government, finds Cabral sympathetically interpreting the international aspirations of the Mexican people. The danger of Bolshevism in the State of Veracruz becomes a subject for many convincing cartoons, of more influence than dozens of leading articles. Mexico City, due to an exceptional drought, is called upon to economize in its use of electric energy and daylight-saving is officially established for a time. Cabral, during the crisis, daily illustrates the necessity. He wages war upon incompetent medical men, portrays the risk the pedestrian takes on the crowded streets of the Capital, the evil effects of unlawful strikes, and so on;—every phase in the everchanging life of the Capital is eloquently depicted. In some of his cartoons of persons he subordinates caricature in favor of true portraiture, and in others, the kindly sympathetic personality of the artist changes rapidly into the satirist and cynical student of life with an ineradicable memory of its shams and miseries.
For the selection of the cartoons reproduced in this book the writer is responsible; it does not profess to represent Cabral’s best work, and he himself would probably have chosen quite differently from the thousands he has done. The cartoons have suffered by reduction and reproduction, as the majority of them have been copied direct from the “Excelsior.” Nos. I., XVII-XXIV and XXV, were reproduced from the original drawings.
The writer’s apology for a selection that may not represent the best of the artist’s work is due to the cartoonist, as those reproduced have been selected on account of their personal appeal to the friends for whom this limited edition is intended. Cabral hopes, at an early date, to publish a representative collection of his work—which all lovers of his art will joyfully welcome.
A critical study of the Mexican cartoonist’s genius will some day be attempted. This little book does not pretend to be anything more than an appreciation by an admirer, who lacks the critical and artistic knowledge to determine Cabral’s true place among cartoonists in Mexico and abroad.
I.
ERNESTO GARCIA CABRAL.