Gráfica Latinoamericana Siglos 20/21 is the title of the ambitious and necessary project presented, under the direction of renowned poster artist and professor René Azcuy at the Museo Mexicano del Diseño (MUMEDI,) located on Francisco I. Madero Avenue, next to the high-traffic area of Mexico City¿s Zócalo. I call it ambitious for its agglutinating, repertoire-like character; necessary, for the lack of a systemic proposal to connect landmarks and figures ad to identify pathways, trends and, why not, exceptions in the field of contemporary Latin American poster art. The show,, comprised of ninety posters, more that 60 percent of which were especially conceived for this project, is open to the public since March through June. Although the genre of poster art was visited by exceptionally valuable artists, among whom José Guadalupe Posada is paramount, since the early Twentieth Century it wasn¿t until the 1970s that it really grew in strength in the region. In those years, the study of Design was added to some educational programs for the first time, and what can be called the first generation of Latin American poster artists to break into the international scene emerged then also, with a unique and diversified series of works that were to distinguish Latin American graphic design in the context of the world¿s graphic arts. Starting with those precepts, Gráfica Latinoamericana Siglos 20/21 tries to weave the story of Design into the general context of Latin American contemporary art, while highlighting two of its most distinctive features: working on commission, and the teacher-pupil relationship. Thus, the show is divided into two essential axis. The first group includes renowned figures in Latin American design, names that stand out for their works as well as for their influence in younger generations of designers. The presence of Alejandro Magallanes, Germán Montalvo, Gabriela Rodríguez, Luis Almeida, Rafael López Castro and Renato Aranda, from Mexico; Felipe Taborda and Fernando Pimienta, from Brazil; Chile¿s Julián Naranjo; Uruguay¿s Carlos Palleiro; Venezuela¿s Santiago Pol; Colombia¿s Martha Granados; and Antonio Pérez Ñiko, Antonio Reboiro, Alfredo Rostgaard, Eduardo Muñoz Bachs and René Azcuy, from Cuba, are the inescapable launching platform for the show¿s second axis: posters as commissioned works. Undoubtedly, working on commission is one of the specific features that define the practice of any designer. The mediation of the commission and, in consequence, then client, condition the creative act and transform it into a challenge where the effectiveness of the message and an economy of resources go hand in hand. For this second axis, the curator has chosen a central theme: Literature in film. According to Azcuy, ¿literature in film has generated a joy in the education of the senses among poster artists and painters, be it humanistic, aesthetic, or artistic in character.¿ In this second grouping we find the youngest designers. Most of the works have been specifically created for the show, and to the boundaries of the theme we need to add the challenge of a poster that is allegorical, carrying new layers of possible reading, rather than narrative. Literature in film is assumed then as a contemporary vision of perceptual, creative, and communicational issues facing a poster artist as he or she confronts worlds that are idealized in a literary work and recreated in a film adaptation. One constant in these works is the use of metaphorical and symbolic languages. The standouts in this section are the works of Beatriz Valerio, Paul Domínguez, Ana Laura Ramos, Francisco Aguiar and Rosalía Balderaj, among others. Lolita, by Renato Aranda, stands out because of its simplicity and effectiveness in the transmission of its message. Inspired in Nabokov¿s novella, as adapted for the cinema by Stanley Kubrik, the artist adds an element of synthesis (candy) that brings together all the implicit motivations if the origin...