Francisco Toledo, Mexican Modernist Kite Painting, Stencil, Woodcut Print Hand Signed, c.2010

Francisco Benjamín López Toledo (born July 17, 1940, Juchitán, Oaxaca) is a Mexican painter, sculptor, and graphic artist. He studied at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de Oaxaca and the Centro Superior de Artes Aplicadas del Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes, Mexico, where he studied graphic arts with Guillermo Silva Santamaria. Toledo’s parents were Zapotec. He is father of poet Natalia Toledo and artists Laureana Toledo and Dr Lakra. Toledo has produced paintings, lithography, engravings, sculpture, ceramics, and designs for tapestry made in collaboration with artisans in Teotitlan del Valle. Toledo was greatly influenced by European artistic traditions—particularly by Jean Dubuffet, Joan Miró, Paul Klee, and Francisco Goya—as well as Latin American folk art. His hybrid style is characterized by its exaggerated and fantastical forms, with an emphasis on geometry and texture. He has depicted subjects both observed from nature and borrowed from dreams. Toledo’s mentor, Rufino Tamayo, credited him with the innovation of a new school of expression. Toledo subsequently traveled and lived in Europe, where he worked briefly with William Stanley Hayter, in Atelier 17. The influence of ideas of artists from different European schools such as Dürer, Paul Klee and Marc Chagall, Blake, James Ensor, Goya as well as the writings of Franz Kafka and Borges have been especially influential. Along with Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Gabriel Orozco and Maria Izquierdo, David Alfaro Siqueiros, José Clemente Orozco he is among the best, and most valuable Mexican artists.
His social and cultural concerns about his home state led to his participation in the establishment of an art library at the Instituto de Artes Gráficas de Oaxaca (IAGO), as well as his involvement in the founding of the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), the Patronato Pro-Defensa y Conservación del Patrimonio Cultural de Oaxaca, a library for the blind, a photographic center, and the Eduardo Mata Music Library. Toledo works in various media, including pottery, sculpture, weaving, graphic arts, and paintings. He has had exhibitions in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain, the United Kingdom, Belgium, France, Japan, Sweden, the United States, as well as other countries.

Awards
Mexican National Prize for Arts and Sciences (Premio Nacional de Ciencias y Artes) (1998)
Prince Claus Award, Prince Claus Fund (2000)
Right Livelihood Award (2005)
Major exhibitions include a 1973 show in the Carl Finkler Gallery in Paris, and, in 1975 a show at the Martha Jackson Gallery in New York. In 1980 the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City held a major retrospective.
His work is included in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.