First Steps

Louis Henri Jean Charlot (1898-1979) was a French-born American painter and illustrator, active mainly in Mexico and the United States. Charlot’s mother’s family originated from Mexico City, and the artist was fascinated with Mexican manuscripts and pre-Columbian artifacts. He studied art in Paris before serving in the French army during World War I. Charlot spent an extensive period of his life living and working in Mexico. After the death of his father, the artist and his mother moved to Mexico City. He was a part of the circle of the painter and muralist Diego Rivera who introduced him to other young artists. Charlot moved to New York in 1928, where he taught at the Art Students League. After the Mexican Revolution, mural painting became a mode for teaching, and Charlot painted a fresco at the commission of the Mexican Minister of Education. Charlot’s was the first mural finished and the first in the fresco technique. Thus, the artist was one of the founders of Mexican muralism. In 1928, works by Charlot were included in an exhibition at the art Center Gallery in New York. Between 1926 and 1928, he spent three seasons excavating the Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza in Mexico. The artist traced and copied bas-reliefs and painted surfaces as they were unearthed. The work had a major influence on his own art, as can be seen in the lithograph First Steps from the 1930s. The artist produced more than seven hundred prints. Many of Charlot’s prints utilized the medium of lithography, both stone and offset, made with his long-time collaborator, Los Angeles printer Lynton Kistler. In the United States, Charlot executed commissions for the Work Projects Administration’s Federal Arts Project. He taught at the first Summer Institute of Black Mountain College. In 1947, Charlot taught fresco painting and worked on several editions of lithographs at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center. The artist went to teach at the University of Hawaii, where he remained for over thirty years.