Lourdes Grobet

Grobet was born in Mexico City,[4] where she grew up with her parents. Grobet took a formal painting class at the Academy of San Carlos. Her parents did not like the views of the school and sent her to work under a Catholic professor named José Suárez Olvera, who painted murals for the Church of San Francisco.[1] She did not care for his work much because she felt it lacked originality. Grobet asked herself what art is, “Looking around, and after asking myself the inevitable questions about what art is, it became clear that for me it was a language, a way of saying things, and so I had to find the best way of saying them.”[6]

Lourdes Grobet studied plastic arts at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico and graphic design and photography in Britain at Cardiff College of Art and Derby College for Higher Education.[4] She was very moved by her professor Mathias Goeritz, from whom she learned that mass media showed a new way of expression. When Goeritz gave up teaching, he asked Grobet to be his assistant while he worked on stained glassed windows for the Mexico City Cathedral. She studied in England in 1977 and had done a few landscape paintings. She ended up failing, however, because the photography faculty did not like that she altered the landscape and strayed away from keeping it purely documentary.

Katy Horna introduced Grobet to the world of photography, though the main influences in her early career were Mathias Goeritz, Gilberto Aceves Navarro, El Santo and others.[6]

Grobet studied as a painter in Mexico for some time and then took a trip to Paris in 1968, it changed her life and the way that she viewed the art world.[7]

While she was in Paris she visited a lot of art galleries and discovered Kinetic Art[1] and because of this, she likes to work with Multi-Media. She spent some time working with a Jazz concert controlling lighting and kinetic projections. When Grobet returned to Mexico, she decided that she wanted to focus on photography, after she got back home she decided to burn all of her old work and start over.[6]

In 1981 Grobet released her first set of photographs. At the beginning of her career in photography, she was part of a group called Consejo Mexicano de Fotografía (Mexican Council of Photography),[8] formed by Pedro Meyer in 1977.[9] With her participation in this group, she was able to revitalize photography in Mexico, which lead to a movement called the Grupos. Grobet was focused on establishing a community-based perspective.[10]

Grobet spent some time with Indigenous people and during a time of great struggle for them. She took the time to learn more about them and photograph them in a theatrical way. She wanted to relate to Indigenous people using her artistic initiative, so they had made costumes and scenery of their own and she then took their photos. Later on, Grobet took interest in the Mayan culture. Wanting to learn more about the Mayans she went to the suburbs, this was a less common action, but she wanted to steer clear of any tourists. She wanted to get accurate information and explore an area less traveled. She discovered temples that were made by an unknown civilization and she decided they were to be called the Olmayazetec.

After her education and her travels, she came back to Mexico. She once again started to explore her childhood interest of luchadores.[6] She found that there was very little information pertaining to the luchadores and so she decided that she wanted to make them more known to the world.[11]

Grobet spent thirty years devoted to taking pictures of the luchadores and studying their way of life.[2][12] She spent time photographing Lucha Libre wrestlers inside and outside of the ring, both in their masks, but also in their own homes. Grobet wanted to show that they lived normal lives, just like everyone else. She got very close with well known Lucha Libre wrestlers such as: El Santo, Blue Demon, Mil Mascaras, Sagrada, Octagon, Misioneros de la Muerte, Los Perros del Mal, and Los Brazos.[13] Much influenced by Mathias Goeritz, the Polish sculptor from Gdańsk and by Gilberto Aceves Navarro, a Mexican master of art murals, who were her teachers, Lourdes Grobet worked on pictures of El Santo, one of the most important Mexican wrestlers, and a hero of Lucha libre who starred in more than 50 films. Since 1975, she has published more than 11,000 photographs of the sport, including those on the sport in the United States since the 1930s, and as an important part of Mexican popular culture, adopting a sociological attitude. The sport involves many costumes and masks, leading it to a sport-carnival air which is much appreciated by Mexicans.

Grobet has had over one hundred exhibitions of her photographs, both group and solo exhibitions. She had her work exhibited in the London Mexfest festival in 2012. She won an award at the Second Biennal in Fine art photography. In 1975, for the exhibition Hora y media, she transformed a gallery into a photographic laboratory. She developed the photographs, but without fixing them, and displayed them on three walls. While the public looked at the photographs, the lights from the gallery meant that they disappeared.

In 1977, she presented Travelling, an exhibition of photography on an escalator. Among other works, she took: Paisajes pintados, Teatro campesino, Strip Tease.

Grobet married Xavier Perez Barba in 1962 and they had four children together. They divorced in 1974.[6]

As Grobet is making her photographs, she desires to understand reality better. According to Grobet, and as noted in her 2004 book Lourdes Grobet: On the Eye’s Edge[14], “she has used this photographic experience as an inductive process in order to understand or 'live' reality (or realities) rather than illustrate certain preconceived ideas. She is not scared to employ different (sometimes contradictory) languages available to her to speak of her particular experience and standpoint, thus sacrificing formal purism. In her own way, Grobet manages to use photography to relate to herself, to relate to us and to take action in the problematic reality that is Mexico.” [14]

Some of the work that she does is collaborative, while others, she likes to do on her own time.[10] When photographing the luchadores she wants to show their tough side, but she also wants to show the fragile side as well. Grobet wants to uncover the roots of the Lucha Libre. She wants to show that the Lucha Libre is important to the culture of Mexico and that they are meant to be related back to the time of the Aztecs. Grobet found that there was not much information found about these fascinating Luchadores.[11] She wants the luchadores to get the recognition they deserve as Mexico's important cultural figure.[11]

 Comment: These are all sourced to the photographer's own website and all require independent reliable citations|date=May 2020

• FONCA grant. Mexico 2010 – 11 Mexico
• Macdowell Residency, U.S.A. 2007[15]
• FONCA grant. 2005-2006
• Bellagio Residency, Italy. 2003[16]
• MacDowell Residency, U.S.A. 2002[15]
• Yaddo Residency, U.S.A. 2001[17]
• Grant, Sistema Nacional de Creadores, Mexican Cultural Institute, Mexico, 1999–2001
• Banff Centre for the Arts, Residency Canada, 1996
• Grant, Sistema Nacional de Creadores, Mexican Cultural Institute, Mexico, 1995–1998
• International Award, Latin American Emancipation and Identity 1492–1992, contest, Quito Ecuador 1992
• Best Monument Award for commemoration of XX Anniversary of Tlatelolco massacre
• With the group Proceso Pentagono, Mexico 1988
• Best Book Award, Juan Pablos Editions, Mexico, 1988
• Award “Libro Propositivo”, Mexico 1984
• Photographic Biennal award, Mexico 1982[5]

 Comment: These are all sourced to the photographer's own website and all require independent reliable citations|date=May 2020

• 1983 "Se escoge el tiempo"/ Los Talleres, Mexico City. 1984 "Luciérnagas"/ E.N.A.P. Mexico City
• 1987 "Bodas de Sangre"/ Tabasco County Government
• 2004 "Lourdes Grobet"/. Turner Editions, Spain
• 2005 "Espectacular de Lucha Libre"/. Trilce Editions, Mexico City
• 2007 "Retratos de Familia"/ Reverté Editores, Mexico-Spain
• Gorbet Lordes. Gorbet Lordes. Madrit: Turner, Edition: 1. Ed., 2005
• Lucha Libre: Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling[5]

 Comment: These are all sourced to the photographer's own website and all require independent reliable citations|date=May 2020

Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY[21]

Fundación Cultural Televisa[4]

Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, Mexico[4]

Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin, TX[4]

Musée du Quai Branly, Paris, France[4]

The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX[22]

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA[23]

Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA[24]

• Se Escoge el Tiempo (1983)
• Luciérnagas (1984), not a book, but a published collection of loose photographs
• Bodas de Sangre (1987)
• Santo y Seña de los Recintos Históricos de la Universidad de México (1996) ISBN 968-36-4630-1
• Lourdes Grobet (2004) ISBN 84-7506-620-8
• Lucha Libre: Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling (2005) ISBN 1-933045-05-1
• Espectacular de Lucha Libre (2008) ISBN 968-9044-16-8
• Lucha Libre Mexicana (with Gabriel Rodríguez) (2008) ISBN 968-9044-17-6
• Retratos de Familia (2009) ISBN 6077515051

• (in Spanish) Official website
• (in Spanish and English) "La máscara en la cultura y la política mexicana", text by Lourdes Grobet dealing with her work on Lucha libre
• (in Spanish) "Espectacular de Lucha Libre", presentation on the editor's site
• (in English) "Lucha Libre. Masked Superstars of Mexican Wrestling" Presentation of the American edition of the book on the site Photo-eye
• (in English) "Lourdes Grobet: The Woman Behind the Masks", by Joe Hilliard